1     0  WRONG 

|j§ll  1  THE.  WMg 

f  Uti  Hi 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 
AFTER  THE  WAR 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 
AFTER  THE  WAR 

AN  ELEMENTARY  CONSIDERATION 

OF  CHRISTIAN  MORALS  IN  THE  LIGHT  OF 

MODERN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


BY 

BERNARD  IDDINGS  BELL 

DEAN  OF  ST.    PAUL'S   CATHEDRAL  CHURCH 

FOND  DU  LAC,   WISCONSIN 

MEMBER  OF  THE  JOINT  COMMISSION  ON  SOCIAL  SERVICE 

OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

(Cbe  fiifcewitie  prcs£  Cambridge 

1918 


3\ 


<3* 


COPYRIGHT,    1918,    BY   BERNARD   IDDINGS   BELL 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  May  igi8 


■    • 

.    ■        ■        . 


TO   MY   FATHER 

CHARLES  WRIGHT  BELL 

THIS   BOOK  IS  AFFECTIONATELY   DEDICATED 


385014 


PREFACE 

The  chapters  of  this  book  were  origi- 
nally lectures  delivered  at  the  19 17 
Conference  for  Church  Workers  at  the 
Episcopal  Theological  School  in  Cam- 
bridge, Massachusetts.  At  the  request  of 
a  number  of  the  members  of  my  class, 
men  and  women  keenly  interested  in  re- 
ligion and  in  our  modern  social  life,  as 
it  is  and  as  it  is  to  be,  I  have  prepared 
them  for  publication. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  no  one  will  sup- 
pose them  to  be  presented  as  final  con- 
clusions, dogmatically  stated.  He  would 
be  a  madman,  indeed,  who  thought  that 
he  had  either  the  authority  or  the  ability 
to  tell  the  Christian  world  just  how,  in 
these  times  of  flux  and  confusion,  it  ought 
to  be  applying  the  principles  of  Chris- 

•  • 

Vll 


PREFACE 

tian  ethics  to  that  way  of  living  which 
is  in  process  of  becoming.  He  would, 
however,  be  a  blind  man  who  did  not 
see  that  the  old  ways  of  teaching  ethics 
to  Christian  people  and  the  old  ways  of 
comprehending  ethics  by  those  people 
are  no  longer  vital.  It  is  the  part  of  wis- 
dom that  each  of  us  should  seek  for  him- 
self to  apply  Christian  moral  principles 
to  the  new  problems  of  living,  and  that 
he  should  be  willing  to  offer  his  tentative 
conclusions  for  criticism  by  his  fellows 
and  assistance  to  his  fellows.  Only  after 
many  have  done  this  can  the  Church  as 
a  whole,  roused  to  the  importance  of  the 
task,  be  enabled  corporately  to  teach  the 
men  of  the  new  age  how  they  may  follow 
Jesus  in  their  day.  It  is  this  preliminary 
sort  of  thing  which  I  have  endeavored  to 
do  in  this  book. 

Its  only  values,  therefore,  will  be  in 

•  •  • 

Vlll 


PREFACE 

the  revelation  of  how  one  priest's  mind 
has  reacted  in  the  face  of  the  necessity 
of  teaching  the  old  morality  in  the  terms 
of  the  new  life,  and  in  the  stimulation 
of  the  thought  of  the  reader  along  this 
line. 

It  would  be  futile  to  claim  originality 
for  much  that  is  herein  contained.  There 
has  been  no  conscious  plagiarizing,  but 
much  has  been  absorbed  from  many 
books  and  from  conversations  with  people 
whose  expert  knowledge  of  various  pha- 
ses of  the  problem  I  have  gladly  drunk 
up,  in  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  do 
so.  To  all  who  have  taught  me,  I  hereby 
express  my  appreciation.  Especially  do 
I  wish  to  thank  the  members  of  my  class 
at  Cambridge  for  their  kindly  and  illu- 
minating criticism  of  many  of  the  posi- 
tions I  have  taken. 

Bernard  Iddings  Bell 


CONTENTS 

I.  The  Problem  of  Restatement  .        i 

II.  Problems  connected   with   the 

Hunger  Urge      ....     23 

III.  Problems  connected   with   the 

Sex  Urge        .       .       .       .       .     58 

IV.  Problems  of  the    Local    Com- 
munity      100 

V.  National     and    International 

Problems 147 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 
AFTER  THE  WAR 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   PROBLEM   OF  RESTATEMENT 

Therefore  every  scribe  who  hath  been  made  a  disciple  to 
the  kingdom  is  like  unto  a  man  that  is  a  householder y  which 
br in geth  forth  out  of  bis  treasure  things  new  and  old. 

ST.    MATTHEW,    13:52 

I 

To  many  people  the  advocate  of  a  re- 
statement of  Christian  ethics  appears  as 
one  who  would  reject  the  ancient  faith 
for  some  modern  substitute.  This  is  due 
to  a  common  confusion  in  thought,  by 
which  being  good  and  being  religious 
are  supposed  to  be  two  names  for  the 
same  thing.  Religion  and  ethics  are  not, 
in  fact,  identical.  Their  relationship  to 
one  another  is  that  of  antecedent  and 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

consequent.  No  religion  has  ever  been 
merely  a  collection  of  rules  about  being 
good.  The  essence  of  religion  is  a  mys- 
tical contact  with  a  supernatural  Being, 
by  which  worshippers  gain  the  courage 
and  the  grit  necessary  to  live  up  to  some 
system  of  ethics  which  has  come  into 
being  as  the  result,  largely,  of  economic 
and  social  necessities.  The  fruit  of  a  re- 
ligion is  a  certain  type  of  life. 

Despite  occasional  persons  and  pe- 
riods in  religious  development  which 
may  seem  to  say  otherwise,  mankind 
has  known  from  the  beginning  —  pagan 
and  Christian  alike  —  that  men  attain 
salvation  from  failure  in  human  life  by 
their  conduct.  It  is  a  safe  rule  of  thumb 
that  in  any  people  he  is  esteemed  good 
who  so  lives  as  to  advance  the  welfare 
of  the  social  group  of  which  he  is  a  mem- 
ber; he  is  esteemed  bad  whose  conduct 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

is  that  of  one  who  prostitutes  the  com- 
mon weal  to  his  own  advantage.  The 
purpose  of  religion  in  any  social  group, 
from  the  tiny  clan  to  the  international 
brotherhood,  is  to  give  to  men  super- 
natural sanction  for  and  supernatural 
power  toward  fulfilling  a  code  of  ethics 
based  upon  the  social  welfare  of  the 
group. 

Consequently,  it  seems  plain  that  social 
changes  need  involve  a  change  in  theol- 
ogy and  in  religious  activities  only  if  the 
new  conditions  are  inconsistent  with  the 
character  of  the  old  divinities.  If  the  gods 
of  a  people's  devotion  are  sufficiently 
sublime  to  be  capable  of  inspiring  and 
invigorating  a  moral  code  suitable  for 
the  new  day,  there  need  be  no  change 
in  religion,  even  though  the  minutiae  of 
ethics  be  changed  almost  past  recogni- 
tion. 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

It  is  not  a  transformation  of  religion 
that  this  book  is  talking  about  when  it 
advocates,  indeed  states  the  inevitable 
necessity  of,  a  restatement  of  Christian 
ethics.  To  this  author  there  seems  no 
necessity  for  a  new  divinity,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  the  Christian  God, 
Jesus  Christ,  is  a  Deity  the  character  of 
whom  is  so  sublime  as  to  make  Him  the 
unimprovable  Patron  of  an  ethical  sys- 
tem, not  merely  adequate  to  the  new 
and  socialized  era  into  which  we  are 
entering,  but  also  adequate  to  any  sys- 
tem of  human  living  possible  for  the 
mind  of  man  to  imagine  as  existing  on 
this  earth. 

The  Christian  religion  does  not,  can- 
not, change  in  any  essential  particular, 
because  it  is  the  means  of  coming  into 
contact  with  this  incomparably  good 
Deity,  Jesus  Christ,  who,  because  of  His 

4 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

moral  perfection,  is  the  same  yesterday, 
to-day,  and  forever.  It  cannot  change 
because  its  look  is  not  manward  but 
Godward,  to  Him  than  whom  in  hu- 
man terms  man  cannot  conceive  a  more 
perfect  One. 

It  may  be  objected,  however,  that  re- 
ligion must  change  for  all  that,  because, 
although  the  God  Jesus  is  beyond  im- 
provement, man  the  worshipper  does 
change  very  much  indeed  from  age  to 
age.  This  is  not  as  true  an  objection  as 
it  might  at  first  appear.  Man,  after  all, 
varies  but  little  as  the  ages  come  and  go. 
The  differences  are  accidental,  not  essen- 
tial. We  may  not  carry  food  from  dish 
to  mouth  on  knife  blades,  as  did  George 
Washington  and  John  Adams ;  we  wear 
neither  knee-breeches  nor  powdered 
wigs ;  when  we  get  fevers  we  are  inocu- 
lated instead  of  bled ;  we  write  our  s's 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

above  the  line  and  not  below  it ;  we  talk 
in  the  patois  of  biology  and  psychology 
instead  of  in  the  argot  of  Deism  and  the 
French  Revolution ;  but  after  all,  they 
and  we  are  little  different  in  things  funda- 
mental. The  same  passions  rule  us;  the 
same  needs  and  hungers  impel  us;  the 
same  sort  of  mental  and  physical  equip- 
ment expresses  itself  in  us  as  expressed 
itself  in  them.  The  great  moving  forces 
of  human  life  are  one,  in  all  ages.  The 
species  does  not  gradually  evolve  into  a 
species  of  supermen.  If  Jesus  is  a  Deity 
who  cannot  be  surpassed,  and  if  man- 
kind remains  essentially  the  same,  it  will 
easily  be  seen  that  religion  need  not, 
cannot  change.  The  inner  experience 
of  men  meeting  Christ  to-day  is  exactly 
that  of  the  men  who  found  Christ  in 
the  days  of  the  catacombs. 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

ii 
Nor,  by  advocating  a  readjustment  of 
Christian  morals,  can  a  right-thinking 
person  mean  any  change  in  the  fun- 
damental principle  of  Christ's  teaching 
to  men,  namely,  that  man  attains  unto 
salvation  only  through  sacrifice.  The 
Golden  Rule  is  not  the  essence  of  Chris- 
tian ethics.  A  better  expression  of  it  in 
brief  is  this  :  "  He  who  would  save  his 
own  life  shall  lose  it ;  but  he  who  loses 
his  life  shall  find  it."  In  any  system  of 
ethics  which  can  under  the  broadest  in- 
terpretation be  called  Christian,  this  fun- 
damental law  of  salvation  through  sacri- 
fice must  be  the  thing  which  unifies  it 
all,  the  thing  which  is  being  expressed. 
It  must  not  be  obscured  into  salvation 
through  ceremonial,  or  salvation  through 
intellectual  acceptance  of  dogma,  or  sal- 
vation through  mere  good  works.  It  is 

7 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

beneath  each  of  these,  and  greater  than 
any  of  them.  All  right  Christian  cere- 
monial is  an  attempt  to  figure  salvation 
by  sacrifice;  the  sole  possible  use  of  in- 
tellectually accepting  Christ  by  faith  is 
to  put  one's  will  atune  with  Him  who 
impels   mankind    toward  sacrifice;  the 
only  works  that  are  good  in  reality  are 
those  proceeding  from  a  will  to  sacrifice. 
This  fundamental  soteriological  prin- 
ciple is  symbolized  in  the  Holy  Cross, 
which  even  downright  and  post-liberal 
persons  like  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  cannot  un- 
derstand. Jesus'  prescription  for  conduct 
is  this,  "  He  who  would  come  after  Me, 
let  him  take  up  his  cross  and  follow  Me." 
Much    twaddle   has  been   talked  about 
"  bearing  one's  cross."  Almost  every  sort 
of  unavoidable  affliction  has  been  spoken 
of  by    spiritual    ignoramuses    as    being 
some  one  or  other's  "  cross  in  life."  The 

8 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

whole  meaning  of  Christ's  cross  is  lost  un- 
less one  remembers  that  He  did  not  have 
to  bear  it,  but  that  He  chose  to  bear  it,  at 
great  cost  to  Himself,  because  He  loved 
human  folks.  No  man  can  be  said  to  be 
bearing  his  cross  after  Christ  unless  he  de- 
liberately and  voluntarily  endures  depriva- 
tion, labor,  pain,  suffering,  which  he  might 
have  escaped,  but  which  he  took  upon 
him  because  he  loved  the  brethren. 

The  desire  so  to  sacrifice  one's  self  is 
the  Christian  virtue  oi  car  it  as  or  love.  To 
Jesus  and  His  early  interpreters,  back  of 
all  Christian  morality  was  this  love.  To 
Him  and  to  them  all  the  possible  law  and 
all  the  possible  prophecy  were  summed  up 
in  the  two  commandments,  "Thou  shalt 
love  God,"  and  "Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor."  All  Christian  conduct  is  but 
the  application  of  the  desire  to  put  one's 
self  out  for  God  and  man  —  to  put  one's 

9 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

self  out  of  one's  mind  as  an  end  to  be 
served,  and  to  put  them  in  in  one's  stead. 
The  failure  to  live  so  is  sin  and  cuts  us  off 
from  God.  The  endeavoring  so  to  live  is 
the  process  of  salvation. 

This  principle  cannot  be  omitted  or 
slurred  in  any  moral  system  calling  itself 
Christian. 

It  is,  however,  not  only  possible  but 
necessary  to  vary  the  application  of  this 
basic  principle  to  the  actual  problems  of 
our  lives.  As  these  problems  change,  so 
in  details  must  our  ethical  code  change 
also.  Things  judged  morally  defensible 
in  one  generation  may  be  grievous  sins 
in  a  succeeding  generation.  Conduct  es- 
teemed vicious  in  one  age  may  be  seen  to 
further  high  moral  goods  in  another  age. 
For  example,  Sts.  Chrysostom  and  Am- 
brose—  to  take  only  two  of  a  multitude 
—  denounced  all  taking  of  interest  on 

10 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

money  as  a  heinous  violation  of  the  com-* 
mandment  against  theft,  sufficiently  grave 
to  justify  formal  excommunication  of  an 
offender.  Yet  these  last  months  it  has 
been  a  common  thing  to  hear  clergy  urg- 
ing their  people  as  a  moral  duty  to  invest 
their  money  in  the  Liberty  Loan,  at  four 
per  cent.  Other  vivid  variations  of  teach- 
ing may  be  found  regarding  sex  morality 
and  the  marriage  relationship.  Develop- 
ing types  of  culture,  changing  economic 
systems,  the  social  desirability  of  stimu- 
lating or  restraining  certain  natural  im- 
pulsesof  human  nature  varyingfrom  time 
to  time,  —  all  these  change  ethical  teach- 
ing among  Christians  from  age  to  age.1 

1  At  a  recent  Church  congress  a  woman  who  teaches  in 
one  of  our  great  colleges  visited  a  fort  with  a  number  of  the 
clergy.  She  looked  at  the  great  guns  with  a  pacifist's  dis- 
like, and  finally  said,  «*  I  wonder  what  the  Apostles  would 
have  said  at  the  sight  of  those  guns."  Thereupon  one  of  the 
clergy  promptly  rejoined,  "  They  would  have  said  nothing 

I  I 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

in 
It  is  hardly  more  than  a  truism  to  say 
that  in  our  day  society  is  being  rapidly 
metamorphosed,  that  a  new  era  in  mat- 
ters civic,  industrial,  and  social  is  rapidly 
emerging  from  the  worn-out  remnants 
of  an  age  which  has  seen  great  days  and 
great  achievements  and  then  been  out- 
worn. The  day  that  is  dying  is  the  day 
of  individualism,  of  commercialism,  of 
competition.  It  succeeded  the  feudal  pe- 
riod some  three  and  a  half  centuries  ago. 
It  reached  senility  about  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century,  and  the  Great 
War  is  now  digging  its  grave.  The  new 

of  any  particular  importance. ' '  The  professor  was  much 
shocked  ;  but  the  answer  was  profoundly  true.  The  sociol- 
ogy of  the  Apostles  is,  fortunately,  not  binding  upon  the 
Church.  As  a  theologian,  for  instance,  St,  Paul  is  an  im- 
mortal leader.  A  good  part  of  his  sociology,  including  his 
solemn  pronouncements  about  the  proper  place  of  women  in 
the  world,  to-day  is  simply  bosh. 

12 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

day  is  apparently  to  be  a  day  of  increasing 
cooperation,  socialization,  collectivism. 
As  it  dawns  we  are  seeing  more  and  more 
clearly  that  the  individual  is  primarily  a 
social  creature. 

Of  course,  even  in  the  most  individu- 
alistic days,  we  never  quite  forgot  that  he 
was  such  a  creature ;  but  for  a  consider- 
able number  of  decades  and  even  gener- 
ations that  has  not  seemed  to  us  the  thing 
of  primary  importance  about  him.  He 
has  been  an  individual  first  and  a  mem- 
ber of  the  social  organism  second.  The 
trend  of  things  nowadays  is  to  consider 
him  first  as  a  social  cooperator  and  only 
secondarily  as  an  individual. 

This  trend,  which  we  may  or  may  not 
like,  is  manifested  in  all  phases  of  life. 
We  see  it  in  modern  industry  and  busi- 
ness, with  its  trend,  so  utterly  independ- 
ent of  hysterical  and  theoretical  oppo- 

l3 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

sition,  toward  combination,  cooperation, 
and  coordination  of  specialized  and  de- 
pendent individuals  into  one  whole.  We 
find  it  in  modern  law,  where  the  right 
of  the  whole  group  to  regulate,  limit,  and 
even  abolish  the  privileges  of  individuals 
is  increasingly  acknowledged.  It  is  appar- 
ent in  contemporary  education,  which  is 
far  less  concerned  than  pedagogy  used 
to  be  with  producing  self-sufficient  and 
rounded  individuals,  and  much  more  oc- 
cupied with  developing  specially  skilled 
cooperatorsin  a  whole  much  greater  than 
any  individual.  Modern  medicine  exhib- 
its the  same  tendency  when  it  concerns 
itself  more  and  more  with  prevention  of 
disease,  instead  of  stressing  the  cure  of 
individual  sufferers  merely.  In  modern 
criminology  retribution  has  given  place 
as  the  motive  for  punishment  to  educa- 
tion and  social  restoration  of  the  crimi- 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

nal.  Modern  charity  refuses  to  be  longer 
content  with  relieving  sporadic  instances 
of  poverty,  and  more  and  more  insists  — 
often  to  the  grave  discomfiture  of  its 
largest  supporters  —  upon  trying  to  cure 
the  social  cancers  of  which  individual 
cases  of  want  are  usually  only  manifest- 
ing sores. 

Of  course  the  enthusiasts  in  all  these 
lines  of  activity  go  to  extremes.  Some- 
times we  feel  there  is  danger  that  the 
individual  shall  be  even  more  forgotten 
to-morrow  than  the  social  group  was 
yesterday.  However,  discounting  the 
extravagances  of  extremists,  it  neverthe- 
less remains  as  plain  as  the  nose  on 
Savonarola's  face  that  within  the  last 
fifty  years  or  so,  in  every  phase  of  life 
and  thought,  we  have  turned  to  the 
right-about-face  from  the  position  taken 
by  our  ancestors  as  to  the  relative  im- 

15 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

portance  of  the  individual  and  the  social 
organism.  We  had  made  great  progress 
in  this  process  of  turning  round  and 
starting  the  other  way  even  before  the 
days  of  the  great  World  War. 

Now,  urging  along  at  breakneck  speed 
a  development  which  was  already  com- 
ing faster  than  we  were  ready  to  meet 
it  with  Christian  moral  influences  and 
restraints,  comes  the  international  con- 
flict. The  war  is  socializing  things  and 
thoughts  with  the  speed  of  a  prestidigi- 
tator. Surtaxes  on  incomes  and  profits, 
prohibitions  of  speculations  hitherto  con- 
sidered legitimate,  appointments  of  food 
dictators,  selective  conscription  of  our 
manhood,  commissions  for  the  settle- 
ment of  labor  disputes,  maximum  and 
minimum  prices  publicly  regulated, — 
these  and  similar  things  come  along  and 
we  accept  them  without  question,  often 

16 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

little  realizing  the  mighty  social  changes 
of  which  they  are  indices.  When  we 
consider  what  the  war  has  done  to  the 
life  of  the  European  combatants,  we 
can  easily  perceive  what  it  is  in  process 
of  doing  to  us.  What  otherwise  might 
have  been  the  social  progress  of  a  cen- 
tury is  being  crowded  into  a  half-decade. 
All  this  readjustment  is  furnishing  a 
challenge  to  the  Church  and  to  Church 
people  unequalled  since  the  challenge 
which  issued  from  the  social  and  indus- 
trial readjustments  of  the  latest  previous 
stress  period  in  the  development  of  the 
world,  that  great  period  when  the  rise 
of  the  merchant  classes  to  power  upon  the 
ruins  of  feudalism  brought  in  the  era  of 
unrestrained  commercial  individualism 
—  the  period  of  stress  which  in  realms 
secular  produced  capitalism  and  in  realms 
religious  projected  Protestantism.    Just 

*7 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

as  that  age  and  its  developing  needs 
cried  out  for  a  new  Christian  ethics,  so 
does  ours  cry  out.  Feudal  ethics  passed 
with  feudalism.  Capitalistic  ethics  are 
passing  with  capitalism.  Collectivist 
ethics  must  come  in  with  the  coming 
collectivism.  Christian  Churchmen  must 
perceive  and  preach  the  relationship  of 
their  Deity  and  His  fundamental  moral 
principle  to  the  collectivist  regime  or 
else  deprive  the  new  age  of  the  sanction 
and  inspiring  power  which  is  in  Jesus. 
They  must  preach  Jesus  in  the  terms  of 
the  new  day  or  else  perish  as  a  moral 
influence  from  the  earth. 

This  is  the  greatest  of  all  the  great 
problems  confronting  the  Church  to- 
day. The  interest  of  the  people  is  not 
in  new  theologies,  not  in  a  new  state- 
ment of  the  mystical  essence  of  devo- 
tion.  Popular  indifference  to  Christian- 

18 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

ity  is  not  explainable  by  a  lack  of  new 
and  novel  dogmas.  No  one  is  interested 
particularly  in  the  subtleties  of  mod- 
ernism or  in  the  ingenious  theories 
of  the  higher  critics  of  the  Bible  —  no 
one  except  a  tiny  group  of  intellectuals 
whose  intellectualism  in  these  virile  days 
has  already  the  fragile  beauty  of  old 
lace  laid  away  in  lavender.  The  great 
masses  of  folks  do  not  fault  the  Church 
for  its  old  concepts  of  God.  Billy  Sun- 
day, the  world's  most  popular  evangel- 
ist to-day,  has  not  found  that  ignorance 
of  higher  criticism  or  belief  in  the  an- 
cient formularies  has  decreased  his  power 
with  the  souls  of  common  people,  or  of 
uncommon  people  either,  for  that  mat- 
ter. Probably  more  people  have  found 
spiritual  meat  in  the  writings  of  Mr. 
H.  G.  Wells  than  in  any  other  books  since 
the  war  broke  out,  and  yet  Mr.  Wells's 

l9 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

•'finite  God"  is  nothing  on  earth  but 
the  old-fashioned  God  Incarnate,  Jesus 
Christ.  He  thinks  he  is  reacting  from 
Nicene  and  Catholic  theology,  but  what 
he  has  really  rejected  is  the  liberal  and 
neo-Protestant  caricatures  of  Christianity 
which  have  sought  to  wash  the  super- 
natural out  of  God  these  many  years. 

The  fault  that  is  really  found  with 
the  Church,  the  reason  for  its  being  in- 
creasingly neglected,  is  that  it  fails  to 
show  men  the  relationship  of  Jesus 
Christ  to  their  actual  problems  and  their 
daily  lives.  Great  sins  and  selfishness  it 
fails  to  rebuke  in  Jesus*  name,  merely 
because  those  particular  sins  and  selfish- 
ness are  of  a  newly  developed  sort.  It 
denounces,  on  the  other  hand,  things 
which  once  were  very  harmful  socially, 
but  are  of  no  great  harm  to-day.  The 
masses   have  become  partly  convinced 

20 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

that  the  Church  is  afraid  to  teach  morals 
vitally  for  fear  she  may  lose  her  endow- 
ments and  the  support  of  those  who 
have  wealth,  and  partly  convinced  that 
Christian  ethics  is  irrevocably  tied  up 
with  a  sort  of  life  that  is  passing.  When 
the  Church  begins  to  preach  Jesus,  not 
speculating  about  Him,  but  accepting 
Him  as  her  God  without  question  or 
theorizing,  connecting  Him  up  as  the 
sanction  and  the  inspirer  of  certain  atti- 
tudes toward  vital  problems  of  the  new 
age,  then  and  not  till  then  will  she  re- 
cover her  place  in  the  affections  and 
devotion  of  the  people.  Her  weakness 
lies,  not  in  her  antiquated  theology,  but 
in  her  antiquated  morality. 

The  one  thing  of  importance  is  that 
Churchmen  should  perceive,  and  then 
help  others  to  perceive,  how  the  glory 
and  power  that  is  in  Jesus  may  be  ap- 

21 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

plied  to  life  among  us,  how  we  are  to 
transmute  the  vision  gained  from  the 
Crucified,  the  vision  of  the  undying  no- 
bility of  sacrifice,  the  perception  of  the 
glory  of  the  Cross,  into  such  deeds  as 
shall  make  Christian  people  everywhere 
supremely  servants  of  salvation,  bring- 
ers-in  of  justice,  exhibitors  of  love,  fore- 
runners of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  If  the 
Church  is  to  give  this  aid  she  must  be 
up  and  about  her  business,  seeking  to 
understand  the  newer  concepts  of  life 
about  her,  and  preaching  the  Cross  as 
one  who  brings  out  of  her  treasury  things 
in  essence  as  old  as  God,  but  in  their 
application  as  new  as  the  raw  and  un- 
formed life  about  us.  To  do  this  is  to 
reinterpret  Christian  morals  to  a  code- 
less  age.  To  do  this  is  the  highest  form 
of  Christian  social  service. 


CHAPTER  II 

PROBLEMS  CONNECTED  WITH  THE 
HUNGER  URGE 

Much  food  is  in  the  tilled  land  for  the  poor, 

But  there  is  that  is  destroyed  by  reason  of  injustice, 

PROVERBS,    13  :   23 

It  is  an  established  principle  of  sociology 
that  the  two  great  needs  which  impel 
mankind  to  most  of  its  actions  and  which 
determine  most  of  its  institutions  are  the 
same  two  primary  needs  which  impel 
toward  action  and  evolution  all  living 
creatures,  the  need  for  food  and  the  de- 
sire for  sex  expression.  He  who  would 
in  any  age  understand  life  about  him 
can  arrive  at  a  quick  and  adequate  per- 
ception of  it  in  no  way  more  quickly 
than  by  examining  just  how  the  satis- 
faction of  these  two  needs  is  being  pro- 

23 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

vided  for  or  kept  away  from  the  masses 
of  the  people.  The  food  need  is  behind 
that  which  we  know  in  social  science  as 
property.  The  sex  need  is  back  of  that 
which  we  call  the  family.  Of  course  the 
two  are  inextricably  bound  up  together. 
The  desire  for  food  hinders  natural  fam- 
ily development.  The  desire  for  sex  ex- 
pression complicates  the  problem  of  pro- 
viding food. 

It  is,  however,  possible  to  examine 
them  separately  with  some  illuminating 
results.  We  shall  endeavor  to  do  so  in 
this  and  the  following  chapter.  Our 
method  shall  be  to  ask  a  question,  an- 
swer it  as  well  as  we  can,  and  then 
formulate  a  thesis  as  to  the  application 
of  Christian  ethics  to  the  situation  and 
the  Church's  proper  attitude  toward  it. 
With  these  theses  the  reader  may  or 
may    not    find    himself  in    agreement. 

24 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

That  matters  little,  however.  Consid- 
eration of  the  problems  involved,  rather 
than  final  solution  of  them,  is  the  need 
for  Churchmen  in  this  present  day. 

I.    IS   POVERTY  INCREASING  ? 

Poverty  is,  and  has  been  for  a  num- 
ber of  years,  rapidly  increasing  among 
us.  Only  recently  a  report  issued  by  the 
Department  of  Labor,  widely  circulated 
in  the  daily  press,  said  what  many  an- 
other bulletin  and  book  has  said  these 
many  years,  namely,  that  although  in 
the  past  ten  years  we  have  had  unpre- 
cedented prosperity,  —  a  prosperity  un- 
naturally stimulated  by  our  war  manu- 
factures, but  nevertheless  real,  —  and 
although  wages  in  dollars  and  cents 
have  risen  quite  considerably,  yet  the 
cost  of  living  has  mounted  so  rapidly 
that  even  with  the  increased  wage  the 

25 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

average  worker  is  able  to  buy  less  than 
he  was  able  to  purchase  with  his  lesser 
pay  ten  years   ago.    In  other  words,  in 
the  last  decade,  when  wages  are  meas- 
ured in  purchasing  power  it  is  seen  that 
they  have  decreased.   Robert  Hunter,  in 
his   book   called   "  Poverty,"   Professor 
Edwards,  of  the  University  of  Wiscon- 
sin,   Frank    Streightoff,    in    his    Hart, 
Schaffner  &  Marx  prize  essay  entitled 
"The  Standard  of  Living  among  the 
Industrial  People  of  America,"  are  only 
examples  of  many  conservative  observers 
of  the  trend  of  things  who  have  said, 
and  proved,  that  in  America  to-day  at 
least  a  tenth  of  the  population  lives  be- 
low the  minimum  decency  wage  level, 
and  that  the  proportion  is  increasing. 
The  observation  of  the  casual  onlooker 
will  corroborate  their  conclusions,  for  it 
is  a  commonplace  to  say  that  the  cost 

26 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

of  living  has  risen  these  late  years  much 
faster  than  salaries  and  wages. 

This  is,  of  course,  a  truism.  It  is  not 
realized  by  so  many  people,  though,  that 
there  is  less  and  less  opportunity  among 
us  for  those  dissatisfied  with  their  con- 
dition to  pull  up  stakes  and  go  on  to 
new  and  greater  opportunities  elsewhere. 
The  existence  of  this  opportunity  long 
blinded  Americans  to  their  actual  eco- 
nomic and  social  deterioration.  The 
great  West,  with  rewards  for  the  adven- 
turous and  the  industrious,  is  no  longer 
a  vast  open  territory.  Some  free  land  re- 
mains, but  it  is  for  the  most  part  neither 
good  land  nor  accessible  land,  and  alto- 
gether it  is  not  in  acreage  very  vast  com- 
pared to  our  population  in  more  con- 
gested sections  of  the  country.  It  was  the 
great,  boundless,  fertile  acres  of  the  West 
which  both  made  America  a  haven  for 

27 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

the  peoples  of  the  world  and  also  hin- 
dered any  adequate  grappling  with  our 
social  problems.  Our  people  have  pros- 
pered unbelievably,  but  not  because 
our  institutions  were  especially  fine,  our 
justice  even,  or  our  industrial  democracy 
vital  and  more  than  a  thing  of  paper 
profession.  It  was  due  rather  to  our 
mighty  undeveloped  resources.  Now- 
adays, however,  the  American  social 
system  and  its  defects  in  distributing 
wealth  must  be  faced.  The  poor  can  no 
longer  obey  Mr.  Greeley's  precept  and 
"go  West."  In  the  sense  he  used  the 
word  there  is  no  West.  The  poor  man 
and  the  young  man  must  for  the  most 
part  stay  where  they  are,  or  move  to 
some  place  nearly  the  exact  counterpart 
of  the  place  they  move  from,  so  far 
as  opportunity  for  increased  prosperity 
goes.    If  the  poor  are  not  to  get  con- 

28 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

stantly  poorer,  we  shall  be  obliged  to 
change  some  things  concerned  with  dis- 
tribution of  wealth  very  radically.  It  is 
most  disconcerting  to  feel  that  one  out 
of  every  ten  people  in  the  United  States 
is  living  in  poverty,  hopeless  poverty, 
below  a  decency  income  figure,  below 
a  minimum  efficiency  mark.  It  is  in- 
tolerable that  the  proportion  should  be 
permitted  to  grow  any  larger  or  even  to 
remain  for  long  as  large  as  it  is. 

Is  not  the  first  duty  of  the  Church 
and  her  people  in  the  face  of  this  fact  to 
obey  St.  Paul's  injunction  and  "  remem- 
ber the  poor,"  assuming  in  the  doing  so 
that  the  Apostle  was  speaking  not  euphe- 
mistically but  literally,  —  assuming  that 
he  did  not  advise  that  we  should  merely 
dole  out  to  them  donations,  but  that  we 
should  never  let  them  get  off  our  mind? 

When    Christians    eat    good    meals, 

29 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

cleanly  prepared  and  served,  they  must  re- 
member the  poor  and  say  to  themselves, 
"  One  person  in  ten  in  my  country  can 
never  enjoy  meals  like  these/ '  As  we  read 
noble  books,  hear  great  singers,  enjoy  the 
drama,  are  stimulated  by  lectures  and 
by  converse  with  cultured  people  in 
beautiful  homes  and  clubs,  we  must  re- 
member the  poor  and  say,  "  One  in  ten 
in  this  land  is  forever  barred  from  all 
this.  Between  these  things  and  them  is 
fixed  a  great  gulf,  for  them  impassable/' 
As  we  send  our  sons  and  daughters  to 
higher  schools  of  learning,  we  must  re- 
member the  poor  and  remind  ourselves 
that  thousands  of  loving  parents,  with 
children  as  clever,  it  may  be  more  clever, 
each  year  are  forced  to  withdraw  those 
children  from  school  and  send  them  all 
too  early  into  the  blind-alley  jobs  which 
will  crush  their  spirits  and  enervate  their 

3° 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

brains.  We  must  remember  the  poor, 
think  of  their  poverty,  be  continually- 
distressed  by  it,  be  unhappy  because  of  it. 
It  surely  is  a  part  of  the  Church's  busi- 
ness to  keep  the  fact  of  poverty  before 
her  people.  She  should  help  them  to  re- 
member,—  not  merely  by  urging  us 
sentimentally  and  gushingly  and  super- 
ficially to  give  of  our  superfluity  to  the 
pastor's  discretionary  fund  or  to  this, 
that,  or  the  other  charitable  organiza- 
tion, not  one  of  which  can  do  more  than 
palliate  a  few  of  the  external  manifesta- 
tions of  poverty,  —  but  by  showing  us 
constantly  the  bleak  and  discouraging 
facts  in  the  case.  In  doing  so  she  will 
not  make  us  comfortable.  Mr.  Brand 
Whitlock  once  said  that  the  man  or 
woman  who  had  looked  American  civi- 
lization in  the  face  could  never  have  any 
more  peace  of  mind.   It  will  not  give  us 

31 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

much  of  contented  security.  When  Je- 
sus told  His  followers  that  He  came  to 
give  peace  "  not  as  the  world  gives  it,"  is  it 
not  possible  that  He  meant  that,  whereas 
the  worldly  try  to  assist  us  to  peace  of 
mind  personally  while  socially  there  is 
no  peace,  He  gives  His  peace  only  to 
those  who  are  forever  righting,  as  with 
a  sword,  for  social  peace  first  ?  His  peace 
comes  not  by  forgetting.  His  peace 
comes  from  remembering  so  hard  that 
the  remembrance  breaks  down  the  wall 
of  selfishness  between  man  and  men,  and 
therefore  between  man  and  God. 

Thesis:  It  is  a  part  of  the  moral  duty 
of  Christians  and  their  Church  to  insist 
upon  every  one*  s  facing  the  facts  of  poverty 
squarely  and  unblinkingly ,  to  insist  that  only 
those  who  do  their  best  to  remedy  the  pathetic 
situation  are  worthy  of  comradeship  with 
Jesus,   who   is   Himself  the   brother,   and 

32 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

insists  on  our  being  each  the  brother  of  every 
human  being. 

II.    IS   POVERTY  THE  RESULT  OF  SIN  ? 

A  certain  clergyman  told  him  who 
pens  these  lines,  not  long  ago,  that  he 
had  never  known  any  one  to  be  in  pov- 
erty who  did  not  deserve  to  be.  This  man 
was  no  young  fledgling,  fresh  from  the 
seminary.  He  was  the  pastor  of  a  church 
of  over  one  thousand  communicant  mem- 
bers. He  had  the  responsibility  of  super- 
vising the  religious  education  of  over 
three  hundred  children.  He  had  what  was 
considered  the  third  best  parish  in  his 
diocese.  And  the  influence  upon  thought 
which  he  exercised  is  plain  from  the  re- 
mark of  perhaps  the  keenest  and  sanest 
and  most  highly  esteemed  publicist  of 
his  State  who  remarked:  "I  hear  you 
have  been  over  to  see  the  Reverend  Dr. 

33 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

Blank.  Is  n't  he  the  dearest  old  ass  you 
ever  met?" 

It  is  hard  to  see  how  there  can  be 
people  to-day  blind  enough  to  hold  to 
Dr.  Blank's  opinion  as  to  the  cause  of 
poverty.  There  are,  however,  a  good 
many  still  to  be  found  in  responsible 
positions  in  the  Church,  who  maintain 
that  each  case  of  poverty  is  really  the 
result  of  the  poor  man's  mistakes  and 
sins;  and  there  are  many  who  do  not  say 
it  merely  because  it  seems  to  them  a  tru- 
ism unnecessary  of  statement. 

In  this  plain,  old-fashioned  sense  that 
the  poor  are  poor  because  they  deserve  to 
be,  all  modern  knowledge,  all  contempo- 
rary vision,  denies  the  validity  of  the  posi- 
tion taken.  Any  one  with  eyes  open  to  see 
facts  knows  among  his  own  friends  able 
men  who  cannot  make  enough  to  live 
decently,  and  inefficients  and  incompe- 

34 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

tents  who  have  a  surplus  of  this  world's 
goods ;  people  who  have  souls  honorable 
and  beautiful  who  starve,  while  others, 
rascals  fit  for  hell,  hold  places  of  power 
and  plenty.  The  Psalmist  who  wrote 
that  he  never  saw  the  righteous  forsaken 
nor  his  seed  begging  their  bread  was,  as 
has  been  well  said,  a  man  of  very  limited 
observation ;  but  we  all  bow  respectfully 
to  the  wisdom  of  the  other  Psalmist  who 
looked  on  life  and  cried:  "It  is  these, 
the  ungodly,  who  prosper  in  the  world, 
and  have  riches  in  their  possession.  Then 
sought  I  to  understand  this,  but  it  was 
too  much  for  me  until  I  went  unto  the 
altar  of  God.  Then  understood  I  the 
end  of  these  men."  (Psalm  73.)  Save 
in  exceptional  cases,  the  poor  owe  not 
their  poverty  to  their  own  wickedness. 
The  drunkard  and  the  wastrel  are  not 
always  poor.  One  of  the  richest  men  this 

35 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

writer  knows  is  a  half-imbecilic  degen- 
erate, whose  father  and  grandfather  were 
rich  degenerates  before  him. 

Poverty  is,  however,  the  result  of  sin, 
in  another  and  a  truer  sense.  It  is  the  re- 
sult of  injustice  in  distributing  the  fruits 
of  the  earth  and  of  labor.  It  is  the  result 
of  social  maladjustments  which  need  not 
be.  Part  of  these  are  due  to  the  deliber- 
ate wickedness  of  a  few  men.  Most  of 
them  are  due  to  the  avoidable  stupidities 
of  all  of  us.  In  the  selfishness  and  wick- 
edness which  are  deliberate,  some  of  us 
share;  in  this  stupidity,  almost  all  of  us 
share.  Stupidity  unrelieved  because  of 
inertia,  as  ours  is,  is  sin.  It  is  our  sin, 
then,  our  common  sin,  which  produces 
the  major  part  of  the  poverty  of  the 
world. 

The  Church  may  well  proclaim  that 
poverty  results  from  sin,  but  let  her  re- 

36 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

member  that  the  sin  is  not  the  sin  of  the 
poor  man  alone,  but  the  selfishness  and 
careless  stupidity  of  all  of  us  alike. 

Thesis:  The  Church  should  teach  that  as 
long  as  any  person  is  selfishly  opposing,  or 
through  indifference  preventing,  such  read- 
justments in  our  social  and  economic  system 
as  will  remove  from  all  men  the  burden  and 
the  threat  of  poverty,  he  is  a  sinner  unre- 
pentant, a  violator  of  the  fundamental  law 
of  God ;  and  that  as  long  as  any  person 
neglects  to  inform  himself  his  children,  and 
his  dependents  of  the  facts  about  inequity 
in  our  social  organism,  or  fails  to  urge  ac- 
tion upon  the  basis  of  such  information  when 
received,  he  is  of  those  who  contend  for  God 
with  stupidity  if  not  with  treachery;  and  that 
it  is  almost  wholly  due  to  our  common  in- 
ertia and  selfishness  that  poverty  remains  a 
thing  possible  among  us. 


37 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

III.    WHAT  IS  THE  MALADJUSTMENT  WHICH 
PRODUCES   POVERTY? 

The  maladjustment  which  causes 
poverty  is  to  be  found  in  the  arrange- 
ment we  have  made  for  distributing  the 
products  of  land  and  labor. 

There  is  little  defect  in  our  methods 
of  production  to-day.  Except  in  times 
of  war,  when  the  world  with  ghastly 
wantonness  destroys  wealth  by  the  mil- 
lions of  dollars*  worth  each  day,  there  is 
little  demand  now,  as  there  was  only  a 
few  decades  ago,  for  more  production. 
Our  inventions  of  the  last  half-century 
have  disproved  the  common  statement 
of  the  older  political  economists  that  be- 
cause of  the  niggardly  reluctance  of  Na- 
ture there  will  always  be  great  masses  of 
people  who  must  suffer  and  even  perish 
for  lack  of  sustenance.  As  long  as  this 
was  true  the  chief  demand  made  upon 

38 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

Christians  was  that  they  should  share 
with  their  necessarily  starving  brethren. 
It  is  no  longer  true.  From  a  period  of 
deficit,  as  Professor  Patton  has  clearly 
shown  in  his  "  New  Basis  of  Civiliza- 
tion, "  we  have  passed  to  a  period  of 
surplus.  Instead  of  having  too  little  to 
go  around,  we  have  more  than  we  need. 
It  ought  to  be  plain  to  the  observant 
Christian,  therefore,  that  the  problem 
of  poverty  is  no  longer  one  of  lack  of 
wealth,  but  one  rather  of  inequitable 
distribution  of  our  surplus. 

As  things  are  now  arranged,  to  speak 
plainly,  the  surplus  wealth  of  the  world 
is  being  obtained  by  the  few  who  have 
managed,  by  luck,  by  inheritance,  by 
control  of  machinery,  or  by  privilege  in 
land,  to  get  not  merely  what  they  them- 
selves have  earned  and  deserved  from  so- 
ciety, but  also  much  that  they  have  not 

39 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

earned  and  which  they  have  not  deserved, 
so  that  the  many,  who  are  getting  only 
what  they  earn,  or  less  than  what  they 
earn,  have  still  in  these  times  of  plenty 
not  enough  to  live  on. 

Speaking  in  no  technical  terms,  but 
using  words  in  their  popular  meaning, 
what  is  the  real  value  of  any  commod- 
ity? Obviously  the  cost  of  getting  it  out 
of  the  ground,  labored  over  to  make  it 
fit  for  human  use,  and  transported  to  the 
consumer.  The  value  of  all  commodities 
in  the  aggregate  is  the  cost  of  getting 
them  all  out  of  the  ground,  all  labored 
over,  and  all  transported.  If  all  people 
were  paid  only  for  the  share  they  have 
borne,  directly  or  indirectly,  by  brain- 
work  or  brawn-work,  in  these  various 
services,  there  would  be  little  or  no  pov- 
erty anywhere.  We  pay,  however,  wealth 
to  people  who  do  not,  directly  or  indi- 

40 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

rectly,  by  brain  or  brawn,  contribute  any- 
thing to  any  one  of  these  three  forms  of 
service.  Some  of  these  we  pay  in  rent, 
some  in  profits  on  invested  capital.  Ev- 
ery time,  for  instance,  that  the  consumer 
buys  a  pair  of  shoes  he  not  only  pays  the 
actual  cost  of  raising,  laboring  over,  and 
transporting  to  him  those  leather  foot- 
coverings,  but  also  several  rents  and  sev- 
eral profits  on  investments,  each  of  which 
goes  to  some  one  who  has  not  done  in  re- 
turn for  it  any  real  service.  The  differ- 
ence between  what  it  costs  society  to 
make  things  and  the  price  that  the  con- 
sumer pays  for  them  has  often  been  called 
the  " surplus  value"  of  those  commodi- 
ties. This  surplus  value  mostly  goes  to 
investors,  who  are  thus  supported  by 
society.  Society  must  make  enough 
wealth  to  supply  itself  and  furnish  large 
sums  as  well  to  a  rentier  class.  The  sup- 

4i 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

port  of  this  rentier  class  is  what  makes 
possible  the  over-fed  few  and  the  still 
under-fed  many. 

The  economic  and  social  problem  of 
our  age,  the  unsolved  problem  which 
is  back  of  nine  tenths  of  our  unrest  in- 
dustrially, the  problem  which  must  be 
solved  somehow  if  undeserved  poverty 
is  to  be  lifted  from  the  shoulders  of  mil- 
lions of  human  beings,  is  the  problem  of 
how  to  socialize  the  surplus  value,  how 
to  get  it  out  of  the  hands  of  the  investors 
into  the  hands  of  the  producers. 

An  understanding  of  this  is  necessary 
for  the  comprehension  of  the  significant 
social  movements  of  our  time.  Every 
labor  struggle,  every  strike,  every  lock- 
out, every  labor-union,  every  Socialist 
platform  and  agitation,  every  profit- 
sharing  plan,  every  bit  of  social  insur- 
ance, are  but  aspects,  from  one  angle  or 

42 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

another,  of  the  great  struggle  between 
those  who  seek  to  advance  the  profits  of 
the  investor  and  those  who  seek  to  so- 
cialize those  profits.  Indeed,  even  the 
present  World  War  was  in  its  beginning 
a  conflict  between  investors,  competing 
for  world  opportunities  to  get,  in  the 
far-flung  fields  of  foreign  exploitation, 
profits  such  as  an  awakened  public  sen- 
timent would  no  longer  permit  them  to 
obtain  at  home.  Thus  arise  all  imperi- 
alisms;  and  it  was  imperialistic  greed 
which  caused  the  war. 

Everywhere  we  see  evidences  that  by 
increasing  masses  of  our  people  invest- 
ment for  profit  is  looked  upon  with  grave 
suspicion,  as  a  thing  demanding  rigid 
regulation  at  least  and  sometimes  pro- 
hibition. This  fast-emerging  conviction 
that  rent  and  interest  must  be  more  and 
more  curbed  and  surplus  value  be  more 

43 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

and  more  socialized,  either  through  in- 
come and  inheritance  and  profit  taxes, 
or  through  increases  in  wages  so  made 
that  the  employer  cannot  pass  the  in- 
creased cost  on  to  the  consumer,  or 
through  maximum-minimum  regula- 
tion of  prices  under  State  control,  has 
received  a  tremendous  impetus  from  the 
necessities  of  the  war.  There  emerges  a 
very  profound  conviction  that  since  the 
men  who  are  doing  the  fighting  are  offer- 
ing their  lives,  it  is  most  unjust  to  make 
their  folks  at  home  bear  the  brunt  of 
the  financial  burden,  too,  in  increased 
cost  of  living.  The  price  of  the  war  must 
be  paid  out  of  profits.  This  determination 
is  slowly  coming  from  across  the  water 
to  us  of  America. 

From  causes  independent  of  the  war, 
but  aided  by  war  needs,  too,  profits  are 
become  suspect.  Even  the  most  conserv- 

44 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

ative  of  the  workers  are  no  longer  using 
the  old  slogan  of  the  American  Feder- 
ation of  Labor,  "  A  fair  day's  pay  for  a 
fair  day's  work,"  but  rather  the  new  slo- 
gan, "  We  want  the  profits  of  the  business 
diverted  into  our  hands." 

It  should  be  remembered  that  all  this 
is  not  theory,  but  fact.  It  is  not  Marxian 
Socialism,  or  the  Single-Tax,  or  Syndi- 
calism, or  any  other  "ism"  that  we  are 
speaking  about.  It  is  a  thing  in  actual 
being,  this  growing  popular  disposition 
to  decrease  profits  and  socialize  surplus 
values.  In  the  face  of  this  fact,  it  is  high 
time  that  the  Church  reexamine  and 
possibly  restate  her  teachings  about  the 
morals  involved  in  rent  and  interest  hold- 
ings. 

In  this  connection  the  first  and  most 
obvious  thing  to  say  is  that  according  to 
all  Christian  teaching,  —  according  to 

45 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

the  law  of  love,  —  all  property  regula- 
tions and  privileges  exist  for  persons  and 
their  good,  and  not  the  other  way  about. 
To  love  God  and  to  love  our  neighbor 
sums  up  the  moral  code.  We  are  no- 
where taught  that  stocks  and  bonds  and 
houses  and  lands  are  sacrosanct.  Such 
things  are  to  be  used  as  means  toward 
loving  God  and  man.  All  property  is 
owned  by,  all  wealth  presented  by  God 
to,  the  human  race  as  a  whole.  With 
God  is  no  respect  of  persons.  The  only 
rational  basis,  under  the  Christian  dis- 
pensation, under  which  a  man  may  hold 
any  property  whatsoever  is  as  a  trust  to 
be  administered  for  the  profit  of  its  real 
owners,  namely,  all  his  brethren.  To 
say  this  much  is  to  say  nothing  new. 
No  reputable  Christian  moralist  has  ever 
for  a  single  moment  taught  anything 
else. 

46 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

The  question  therefore  arises,  and  has 
ever  arisen,  whether  or  not  an  individual 
who  holds  wealth  has  a  right  to  rent  it 
out  for  others  to  use,  demanding  from 
those  others  a  fee  in  the  shape  of  rent 
or  interest.  Is  such  a  practice  right  and 
proper,  or  is  it  a  gross  abuse  of  trust  ? 
This  question  the  Church  cannot  dodge 
and  retain  the  respect  of  the  people. 

For  fifteen  hundred  years  or  there- 
abouts the  Church  answered  this  ques- 
tion in  the  negative,  saying  that  to  lend 
wealth  on  interest  was  a  sin  under  the 
commandment  forbidding  theft.  In  the 
Old  Dispensation  it  had  been  forbidden 
to  a  Jew  to  lend  wealth  for  interest  to 
a  brother  Jew.  The  Christian  Church 
simply  continued  this  teaching.  It  seems 
that  John  Calvin  was  the  first  Christian 
moralist  who  ever  countenanced  unre- 
servedly the  taking  of  interest  on  money. 

47 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

Even  in  Shakespeare's  time  the  practice 
was  considered  disgraceful.  To  us  Shy- 
lock  is  a  pathetic  figure.  To  an  Eliza- 
bethan audience  he  was  execrable  because 
he  loaned  money  on  interest.  That  a 
man  should  have  saved  up  or  otherwise 
acquired  wealth  was  thought  to  be  no 
crime;  but  that  he  should  demand  pay 
for  the  use  of  it  was  unforgivable  in  any 
Christian  for  many  a  long  century. 

Then  the  social  change  of  the  fif- 
teenth and  sixteenth  centuries  came. 
What  the  world  needed  above  all  else 
was  increased  production  of  goods.  To 
get  it  society  found  it  necessary  to  offer 
as  a  bait  the  privilege  to  the  saver  of 
investing  his  surplus  for  interest  and  so 
living  off  society  without  labor.  This 
bait,  being  a  social  necessity,  it  was  right 
and  proper  for  the  Church  to  encour- 
age. This  she  did  by  removing  the  ban 

48 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

on  rent  and  interest.   Increasingly  the 
Christian  moralists  let  down  the  bars. 

It  should  be  remembered,  however, 
that  for  the  greater  part  of  her  history 
the  Church  has  prohibited  the  practice, 
and  that  her  reason  for  changing  her 
teaching  is  only,  as  all  Christian  moral- 
ists agree,  the  necessity  for  the  time 
being  of  encouraging  saving  and  stimu- 
lating production. 

At  the  present  time,  when  the  tend- 
ency of  society  is  evidently  to  withdraw 
more  and  more  the  interest-taking  privi- 
lege which  once  it  so  freely  bestowed, 
what  is  the  Church  to  say?  Is  she  to 
be  permitted  to  act  as  conservator  and 
defender,  on  the  ground  of  unchanging 
morals,  of  rights  which  for  most  of  her 
career  she  has  said  it  was  sinful  to  exer- 
cise ?  Is  she  to  be,  or  even  to  appear  to 
be,  the  ally  of  those  profit-takers  who 

49 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

are  already  struggling,  and  will  doubt- 
less increasingly  struggle,  to  stem  the 
popular  determination  to  restrict,  and 
possibly  eventually  to  destroy,  their  privi- 
leges? She  will  not  permit  herself  to  be 
so  used  if  she  is  as  wise  in  the  present 
as  she  has  been  in  the  past. 

Thesis :  The  Church's  teaching  about 
property  in  the  prese?it  situation  ought  to  be 
something  like  this :  All  property  is  given 
of  God  to  the  enti?~e  human  race.  Rights  to 
private  property  are  not  rights  proceeding 
from  God,  but  are  delegated  to  private  hold- 
ers by  the  social  group.  The  group  may  give 
and  take  away  these  rights  as  it  deems  wise. 
Whatever  may  happen  to  be  the  private 
property  regulations  of  society  in  this  or  any 
other  agey  it  is  the  duty  of  every  Christian  to 
hold  what  property  may  be  delegated  to  him  as 
a  trust  for  others  and  not  as  a  source  of  pri- 
vate privilege  and  immunity  from  labor.  It 

5° 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

is  further  the  duty  of  every  Christian  quickly 
and  gladly  to  accojnmodate  himself  to  what 
is  now  or  what  shall  come  to  be  in  the  future 
the  public  will  concerning  how  that  wealth 
he  holds  is  to  be  employed,  hast  of  all,  every 
Christian  should  recognize  that  rents  and 
pro/its  must  be  reduced  at  least  to  the  point 
which  will  enable  such  recompense  of  all 
who  labor  as  will  give  them  opportunity  for 
a  full  human  life,  physically,  mentally,  and 
spiritually. 

IV.   WHAT  SHOULD  BE  THE  CHURCH'S  MESSAGE 
TO  THE  RICH  TO-DAY? 

The  thesis  above  stated  ought  to  be 
taught  to  every  man,  rich  and  poor, 
within  the  Church,  for  the  iniquity  of 
rent  and  interest,  in  so  far  as  they  in- 
volve iniquity,  is  to  be  blamed  not  upon 
the  wealthy  alone,  but  upon  all  who 
would  enjoy,  if  they  could  manage  to 

51 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

gain  them,  special  privileges  and  exemp- 
tions from  that  toil  which  is  the  com- 
mon lot  of  man. 

A  second  message  which  in  the  in- 
terim the  Church  should  preach  espe- 
cially to  the  rich  man  is  the  urging  of 
voluntary  poverty,  not  as  a  beautiful  ex- 
crescence upon  the  Christian  life,  but  as 
an  integral  part  of  it.  It  ought  to  be 
pointed  out  to  him  in  no  uncertain  man- 
ner that  his  luxuries,  his  grand  houses,  his 
motors  of  super-power,  his  yachts,  his 
country  places,  his  reserved  pews  in  the 
choice  parts  of  the  church,  his  liveried 
servants,  his  gorgeous  entertainments,  his 
pomp  and  ceremony,  are  simple  but  pat- 
ent evidences  to  all  the  world  that  his 
religion  amounts  to  very  little.  It  is 
inconceivable  that  Christ  could,  in  a 
world  filled  with  suffering  and  misery 
and  want,  live  blatantly  and  contentedly 

52 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

in  modern  luxury.  In  the  eyes  of  the 
world  one  of  the  greatest  evidences  of 
the  futility  of  the  Church  is  the  world- 
liness  of  those  Church  people  who  be- 
cause of  the  way  they  misuse  their  wealth 
are  conspicuous  before  men.  In  plain, 
loving  terms  the  Church  ought  to  be 
showing  these  people  how  they  make 
themselves  despised  and  cause  Christ  to 
be  mocked. 

Thesis:  The  rich  should  be  frequently 
and  earnestly  admonished  by  the  Church 
that  they  must  either  divest  themselves  of 
luxury  and  extravagance  or  live  in  imminent 
danger  of  losing  their  own  souls,  as  those  who 
profess  with  their  lips  to  serve  Jesus  while 
honoring  Him  not  with  their  substance. 

The  third  thing  which  the  rich  ought 
to  have  preached  to  them  is  that  one 
cannot   do   one's    duty   by  substituting 

53 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

charitable  doles  for  social  justice.  To 
help  those  who  are  in  need  is  noble,  but 
to  give  little  dribbles  of  water  to  a  man 
condemned  to  die  of  thirst,  or  to  oil  the 
aching  limbs  of  one  upon  the  rack  the 
while  the  screws  are  turned  ever  tighter, 
is  cruel,  exasperating,  and  a  travesty  upon 
the  sacred  name  of  charity. 

This  is  true  of  other  things  beside 
purely  alms-giving  activities.  It  is  true, 
for  instance,  of  factory  "  welfare  work." 
Most  of  it  is  excellently  meant ;  but 
the  hands  neither  appreciate  nor  wel- 
come it.  They  do  not  wish  bathrooms 
and  gymnasia  and  paid  nursing  and  doc- 
toring, and  the  rest  of  it.  What  they  do 
desire  is  their  just  share  of  what  the  busi- 
ness produces  and  a  chance  to  do  their 
own  welfare  work.  Providing  summer 
vacations  gratis  for  employees  is  appar- 
ently a  good  thing  to  do.   But  what  era- 

54 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

ployer  wants  anybody  to  plan  his  vaca- 
tion for  him?  It  would  be  much  better 
to  pay  the  employees  enough  to  enable 
them  to  do  as  they  please  in  their  time 
off.  Welfare  work  is  apt  to  be  a  sort  of 
social  hypocrisy. 

It  is  also  true  of  such  things  as  social 
settlements.  Institutions  of  this  sort  are 
most  excellent,  provided  they  are  places 
where  a  neighborhood  can  congregate, 
preferably  in  a  school  or  other  publicly 
owned  building,  and  run  its  own  activi- 
ties. But  the  workers  are  apt,  even  when 
they  use  many  of  our  social  settlements, 
to  damn  heartily  the  people  who  come 
down,  or  as  they  more  often  choose  to 
phrase  it,  "come  over,,,  to  do  good  to 
"the  deserving  but  unfortunate  classes. " 
Just  here,  also,  is  where  much  of  what  is 
called  by  the  Church  "social  service,, 
goes  wrong  and  does  worse  than  no  good. 

55 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

What  wealthy  person  desires  some  one 
else  to  prescribe  the  sort  of  life  he  shall 
live  and  the  sort  of  amusements  he  shall 
enjoy  ?  The  poor  person  likes  it  not  one 
whit  better. 

Thesis:  The  Church  should  earnestly  warn 
the  rich  among  her  people  to  beware,  in  this 
present  age,  of  all  sorts  of  alms-giving,  sci- 
entific or  otherwise. 

V.    WHAT  SHOULD  BE  THE  MESSAGE  OF  THE 
CHURCH  TO  THE   POOR  TO-DAY? 

Without  preliminary  discussion  is  pre- 
sented this 

Thesis :  The  Church  should  thus  address 
the  dispossessed:  "Be  patient  with  the 
wealthy,  the  privileged,  and  the  profit-tak- 
ing classes.  They  are  what  they  are  because 
of  a  social  system  which  your  fathers  as  well 
as  theirs  thought  it  necessary  to  make.  Be 
sure  you  yourselves  desire  justice  for  all  men, 

56 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

and  not  merely  their  privileges  for  your- 
selves.  When  you  are  sure  your  hands  are 
clean,  be  kindly  disposed  toward  them.  In 
the  readjustment  which  is  very  rapidly  com- 
ing, the  initial  stages  of  which  are  upon  us, 
their  lot  will  be  much  harder  than  yours. 
They  need  from  you  friendliness,  patience, 
prayers.  The  new  adjustments  will  come. 
Let  tbem  come  without  hate.  The  rich  are 
human  beings,  just  as  you  are,  not  demons 
disguised  in  flesh.  Help  them  to  share  with 
the  workers  of  the  world  the  vision  of  the 
coming  socialized  State,  of  the  dawning  in- 
dustrial brotherhood." 

VI 

These  are  some  of  the  ways  in  which  it 
seems  to  at  least  one  observer  the  Church 
might  well  be  adjusting  her  fundamental 
morality  to  fit  new  problems  connected 
with  the  hunger  urge  to-day. 


CHAPTER  III 

PROBLEMS  CONNECTED  WITH  THE 

SEX  URGE 

And  God  created  man  in  His  own  image ; 

In  the  image  of  God  created  He  bim  ; 

Male  and  female  created  He  them  : 

And  God  blessed  them,  and  God  said, 

Be  fruitful  and  multiply, 

Replenish  the  earth,  and  subdue  it, 

And  have  dominion.  genesis,  i  :  27—28 

In  the  preceding  chapter  we  looked  at 
Christian  duty  in  the  light  of  certain 
problems  connected  with  the  hunger  for 
food.  Let  us  now  consider  certain  other 
grave  questions  connected  with  that  hun- 
ger which  is  nearly  as  strong  as  that  for 
nourishment,  the  hunger  for  sex-expres- 
sion. From  this  hunger  has  come  the 
family,  the  most  influential  single  factor 
in  social  evolution.  In  it  are  involved, 
first  of  all,  the  amative  relationships  of 

58 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

the  sexes,  and  also,  as  a  result  of  these 
relationships,  the  production  and  the  con- 
servation of  human  young.  If  we  are  to 
be  intelligent  Christians  we  must  see  to 
it  that  we  and  our  fellows  are  cognizant 
of  what  is  emerging  among  us,  in  this 
dawning  of  a  new  period,  in  the  way  of 
convictions  and  practices  involved  in  the 
satisfaction  of  the  sex  urge  and  in  the 
management  of  its  results;  and  that  we 
apply  thereto,  strongly  but  sanely,  the 
fundamental  principle  of  Christ's  moral- 
ity, the  law  of  salvation  through  sacrifice. 

I.    WHAT  IS   FEMINISM  ? 

Before  the  great  World  War  there  was 
a  movement  which  above  all  others  in 
the  social  realm  attracted  attention.  It  is 
destined  to  resume  its  place  as  soon  as 
the  war  is  over.  People  call  it,  some- 
what generally,  Feminism. 

59 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

When  we  hear  the  word  probably  most 
of  us  think  at  once  of  the  demand  of 
women  for  equal  suffrage  at  the  polls. 
This  is  not  the  whole  of  Feminism,  but 
it  is  one  largely  noticed  phase  of  it.  It 
is  surely  not  necessary  here  to  argue 
largely  about  equal  suffrage.  With  every 
desire  to  be  fair  and  open-minded,  and 
with  large  willingness  to  listen  to  all  the 
arguments  of  the  anti-suffragists,  it  is 
difficult  to  see  one  good  reason  why  a 
woman  should  not  be  entitled  to  partici- 
pate in  the  management  of  the  State  on 
an  equal  plane  with  a  man.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  are  several  good  arguments 
in  favor  of  her  doing  so.  The  principal 
reason  is  that  a  woman  is  in  many  im- 
portant particulars  different  from  a  man, 
and  therefore  needed  to  balance  male 
one-sidedness. 

She  differs  from  man  first  in  that  she 

60 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

is  by  nature  entrusted  with  the  major 
part  of  child-production  and  child-rear- 
ing. To  most  men  the  world  is  a  place 
inhabited  by  adults  with  a  modicum 
of  children  attached  thereto.  To  most 
women  it  is  a  place  inhabited  by  chil- 
dren, with  a  modicum  of  adults  to  take 
care  of  them.  If  children  are  ever  to  re- 
ceive their  just  due  in  society,  if  Jesus' 
example  of  placing  a  child  in  the  midst 
is  ever  to  be  generally  imitated,  proba- 
bly it  will  be  first  necessary  to  see  that 
woman  has  the  vote. 

She  differs  also  in  economic  function. 
Because  she  has  always  been  largely  con- 
fined to  the  home  and  her  children  wo- 
man has  always  been,  and  still  is,  pri- 
marily the  director  of  consumption,  as 
man  is  the  director  of  production.  If  we 
are  to  have  a  State  whose  first  care  is 
to  insure  justice  to  the  consumer  rather 

61 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

than  merely  profits  to  the  producer,  and 
where  the  person  who  consumes  is  re- 
garded as  more  in  value  than  the  things 
which  he  consumes,  it  will  be  because 
woman  has  obtained  enough  power  to 
insist  upon  that  being  done. 

In  the  third  place,  woman  differs  from 
man  in  mental  equipment.  Man  by  the 
nature  of  his  labor  these  thousands  of 
generations  has  been  made  largely  a  crea- 
ture whose  affections  and  intuitions  are 
subservient  to  his  cold,  hard  reason. 
There  are  a  hundred  Gradgrinds  who  see 
only  "  facts' '  for  every  female  of  the  sort. 
Everything  in  woman's  life  stimulates 
those  very  intellectual  and  emotional 
qualities  which  man  lacks.  Our  age  is 
suffering  from  too  great  regard  for  facts 
and  not  enough  care  for  feelings,  too 
much  prose  and  not  enough  poetry,  too 
much  logic  and  not  enough  intuition, 

62 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

too  much  " kultur'  and  too  little  "cari- 
tas."  If  giving  woman  the  suffrage  can 
inject,  as  indeed  it  alone  can  do,  that  into 
our  civic  life  which  will  balance  and 
right  our  craft  of  State,  at  present  listed 
grievously  and  dangerously,  it  is  hard  to 
see  how  we  can  long  afford  to  deprive 
her  of  a  vote. 

Talk  about  suffrage,  however,  matters 
little.  It  is  coming,  like  prohibition 
and  international  peace  after  the  war, 
quite  apart  from  whether  we  happen 
to  care  for  it  or  not.  It  is  coming  be- 
cause it  is  but  one  phase  of  that  great 
Feminist  movement  which  is  sweeping 
like  a  balmy  summer  breeze,  or  like  the 
black  plague,  — according  to  one's  point 
of  view,  —  into  the  thought  of  our 
time. 

Feminism  is  the  name  given  com- 
monly to  a  varied  series  of  movements 

63 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

all  based  upon  the  belief  that  a  woman 
is  in  all  rights  and  privileges  the  equal 
of  a  man,  that  he  has  no  opportunities 
which  she  also  ought  not  to  enjoy,  that 
she  is  under  no  obligation  to  sacrifice 
herself  in  any  manner,  or  submit  her- 
self in  any  degree,  to  the  control  of 
man  as  a  sex  or  of  any  man  in  particu- 
lar, unless  she  herself,  freely  and  under 
no  compulsion,  wills  so  to  do  and  agrees 
thereto  in  such  contractual  relationship 
as  shall  insure  her  receiving  from  him 
the  equivalent  of  that  which  she  sur- 
renders to  him.  This  is  a  lengthy  defini- 
tion, to  be  sure.  A  definition  often  must 
needs  be  more  complex  than  the  thing 
it  defines.  Usually  the  more  simple  and 
vital  a  thing  is,  the  longer  and  more  in- 
volved must  be  its  description.  Possibly 
we  may  define  it  in  fewer  words,  and 
yet  get  at  the  same  thing,  by  saying  that 

64 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

Feminism  is  a  philosophy  of  social  liv- 
ing which  maintains  that  a  woman  is  as 
free  as  a  man  to  live  in  any  way  she 
may  see  fit,  except  in  so  far  as  she  shall 
forego  this  right  for  the  sake  of  benefits 
derived  from  a  freely  entered  upon  co- 
partnership. 

This  is  the  real  basis  of  all  Feminism. 
It  is  an  expression  of  that  theory  con- 
cerning the  sexes  held  by  the  writer  of 
the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  where  God 
makes  man  and  woman  and  gives  to 
them  jointly  a  commission  to  rule  the 
earth,  rather  than  of  the  idea  held  by 
the  author  of  that  other  account  of  cre- 
ation which  immediately  follows,  where 
woman,  made  out  of  a  man's  rib,  acts  as 
humble  companion  to  the  lordly  male 
sovereign  of  creation. 

The  popularity  of  Feminism  is  not 
to  be  marvelled  at  in  this  age,  the  key- 

6S 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

words  to  an  understanding  of  which  are 
"  socialization  "  and  "democracy."  Fem- 
inism is  nothing  more  than  an  exten- 
sion of  democracy  from  merely  male 
relationships  to  all  human  relationships. 
More  and  more  we  have  been  learning 
this  long  time  that  all  government  de- 
rives its  only  just  sanction  from  the  con- 
sent of  the  governed.  We  have  seen 
that  this  is  true  in  matters  political.  We 
are  more  than  beginning  to  see  that  it 
is  also  true  in  matters  industrial.  The 
demand  of  the  Feminist  is  that  this, 
which  is  now  so  largely  true  of  the  poli- 
tics, the  industry,  the  morals,  the  whole 
activity  of  males,  shall  also  be  true  of 
the  politics,  industry,  morals,  the  whole 
activity  of  the  entire  human  family.  To 
her  (or  to  him,  for  quite  often  the  Fem- 
inist is  a  man)  no  less  unendurable  than 
an  aristocracy  of  birth  or  caste  or  wealth 

66 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

is  an  aristocracy  of  sex.  Men  have  been 
determining  women's  lives,  women's  con- 
duct, women's  work,  women's  duties, 
and  women's  responsibilities  for  a  long, 
long  time.  The  Feminists  demand,  and 
apparently  are  going  to  get,  the  right 
and  privilege  for  women  of  helping 
men  in  determining  the  lives  of  women, 
and,  incidentally,  the  lives  of  men  as 
well. 

Such  is  Feminism.  What  attitude  is 
the  Church  to  take  toward  it  ?  Is  she  to 
imitate  the  king  of  old  time  and  shout 
defiance  to  the  rising  tide  ?  Only  if  she 
can  find  in  the  new  movement  some 
definite  repudiation,  not  of  St.  Paul's  so- 
ciology, not  of  mediaeval  canon  law,  not 
of  the  opinions  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 
but  of  the  fundamental  principle  that 
human  beings  attain  salvation  through 
voluntary  self-sacrifice. 

67 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

In  this  connection  it  is  well  to  em- 
phasize that  only  voluntary  sacrifice  ful- 
fils the  Christian  ideal.   Obedience  by- 
slaves  produces  little  or  no  character  in 
them,  the  sainted  tentmaker  of  Tarsus 
to    the   contrary  notwithstanding.  The 
enforced  submission  of  woman  has  never 
ennobled  her.    The  really  great  women 
of  history    are   those  who    have   never 
submitted,  but,  despite  great  difficulties, 
have  done  the  work  of  free  beings.   The 
doctrine  that  being  a  slave  is  good  for  the 
soul  is  psychologically  very  poor  stuff, 
indeed,  and  the  Church  can  hardly  con- 
tinue to  maintain  that  the  subservience 
of  woman  is  to  her  advantage.   The  fact, 
therefore,  that   the    Feminist   demands 
definitely  aim  at  making  impossible  in- 
voluntary  submission  by  woman  is  no 
justification  for  the  Church's  opposition 
or  indifference  to  the  movement.   Unless 

68 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

the  Feminist  programme  makes  harder 
the  attainment  of  salvation  through  vol- 
untary sacrifice,  the  Church  and  her  peo- 
ple have  no  business  placing  themselves 
and  their  influence  in  the  way  of  that  pro- 
gram me.  The  present  writer  is  convinced 
that  the  programme  does  not  interfere  in 
the  least  with  voluntary  sacrifice.  If  such 
be  indeed  the  case,  the  Church  ought  to 
be  preparing  to  preach  the  Cross  in  Fem- 
inist terms  as  the  Feminists  increas- 
ingly come  into  control  of  the  thought 
of  the  world. 

Preaching  the  Cross  in  terms  of  Fem- 
inism involves  the  urgingin  Christ's  name 
of  what  many  of  the  better  and  more  in- 
fluential Feminists  already  see  with  some 
clearness,  namely,  that  this  movement 
is  not  in  essence  a  demand  for  woman's 
rights  or  for  woman's  privileges,  but  ra- 
ther for  woman's  responsibilities.  Their 

69 


:  RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

complaint  ought  to  be,  as  much  of  the 
time  it  is,  that  feminine  responsibilities 
are  much  too  light.  The  trouble  with 
women  to-day  is  that  too  many  of  them 
have  too  little  of  responsibilities,  and  that 
all  women  have  too  little  variation  in  re- 
sponsibilities. 

Whenever  one  says  this,  one  subcon- 
sciously feels  a  wave  of  contempt  coming 
back  from  a  large  portion  of  one's  audi- 
ence at  one's  stupidity.  Too  little  re- 
sponsibility, indeed !  Let  a  woman  stick 
to  her  home  and  her  family  and  she  will 
have  absolutely  all,  and  more  than  all, 
that  she  can  possibly  attend  to.  However 
many  people  may  feel  this  to  be  the  case, 
it  is  not  true.  Women  of  ability,  brains, 
initiative,  and  proper  education  in  an 
un-Feminist  society  have  nowhere  near 
enough  to  do  in  taking  care  of  their  homes 
and  their  husbands  and  their  children. 

7° 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

This  was,  of  course,  far  from  true  in 
former  times.  In  days  gone  by  the  house- 
wife and  mother  had  many  and  varied  re- 
sponsibilities, dignified,  engrossing,  self- 
expressive.  They  were  noble,  character- 
building  tasks.  But  the  old  duties  of 
woman  have  been  taken  away  from  her 
one  by  one.  Cultivation  of  food  she  lost 
many  years  ago.  To  a  large  extent  the 
bakery  has  taken  away  her  task  of  mak- 
ing bread.  Sensible  women,  except  in 
war-times,  are  ceasing  to  can  fruits  as 
their  mothers  ceased  to  put  up  vegetables 
and  their  grandmothers  ceased  to  cure 
their  own  hams  and  bacon,  because  these 
things  can  be  done  cheaper  and  better 
in  large  factories.  Our  grandmothers 
worked  for  a  day  with  a  broom  to  do 
what  took  our  mothers  half  a  day  with 
a  carpet  sweeper  and  what  our  wives  do 
in  an  hour  or  two  with  a  vacuum  cleaner. 

71 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

The  domestic  garment-maker  will  ere 
long  be  as  rare  as  the  domestic  spinner 
and  weaver.  The  factory  will  have  taken 
over  her  work.  Once  the  entire  task  of 
educating  children  devolved  upon  the 
mother,  with  some  small  assistance  from 
the  father.  Now  it  is  relegated  to  special- 
ists in  the  schools.  Once  every  case  of 
sickness  was  nursed  by  the  house-mother. 
Increasingly  the  sick  are  being  sent  to 
hospitals  to-day.  Time  was  when  eco- 
nomic needs  demanded  and  got  from 
most  women  from  five  to  ten  or  more 
children,  and  took  literally  years  of  the 
mother's  life  for  the  tasks  of  gestation  and 
nursing.  Now  it  is  a  rare  family  which 
can  afford  more  than  four  children  at  the 
outside.  Thus  for  the  wife  from  three  or 
four  to  nine  or  ten  years  of  exhausting 
but  dignified  labor  are  saved.  It  is  a  great 
problem  for  woman,  relieved  from  all 

72 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

this  labor,  and  much  other  labor  into 
which  it  would  be  profitless  to  enter  here, 
to  know  what  to  do  with  her  spare  time. 
Some  women  fritter  it  away  in  "so- 
ciety " ;  some  use  it  with  small  advantage 
in  useless  tasks;  some  cultivate  petulancy 
and  sicknesses;  some  fly  hither  and  yon 
pursuing  every  new  fad;  but  for  most 
women  their  inactivity  has  become  in- 
tolerable and  they  are  demanding,  in 
stronger  and  stronger  tones,  work  to  re- 
place that  which  has  been  lost  to  them. 
They  are  demanding  responsibility.1 

Furthermore,  life  is  so  organized  that 
there  are  probably  at  least  tour  million 
women  of  marriageable  age  in  our  land 
to-day  who  are  unmarried.  Most  of 
these  are  spinsters  by  necessity,  not  from 
choice.     Many    men    cannot   afford    to 

1  In  this  connection  read  Olive  Schreiner's  Woman  and 
Labor ,  or  Mary  R.  Coolidge's  Why  Women  are  So. 

73 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

marry  and  so  many  women  get  no 
chance  to  do  so.  What  are  these  women, 
more  in  number  than  the  entire  popu- 
lation of  America  at  the  time  of  the 
Revolution,  going  to  do  with  them- 
selves ?  Old-fashioned  domestic  occupa- 
tions, even  to  the  limited  degree  that 
these  are  possible  for  any  woman  to-day, 
are  denied  them.  They  are  demanding 
responsible  and  dignified  employment. 

When  one  remembers  that  probably 
three  fourths  of  the  traditional  respon- 
sibilities of  woman  have  been  removed 
from  all  women  to-day,  and  that  from 
possibly  one  fifth  of  our  women  all  such 
responsibilities  have  been  taken  away,  it 
is  easy  to  understand  the  Feminist  move- 
ment and  to  see  in  it  a  great  opportunity  , 
for  application  of  the  Christ  morality  of 
sacrifice. 

Finally,  it  should  be  said  again  that 

74  , 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

the  Feminists  demand  not  merely  more 
work,  but  more  varied  work.  Among 
the  Feminists  are  thousands  of  women 
who  are  full  of  rebellion  at  being  con- 
demned by  tradition  to  keep  house  and 
tend  babies  whether  or  not  they  are  par- 
ticularly fitted  to  do  these  things  well, 
whether  or  not  they  have  exceptional 
talents  for  doing  other  things  instead. 
Into  this  cry  we  need  not  enter  here, 
further  than  to  notice  that  it  is  really  a 
cry  to  be  liberated  from  a  convention- 
enforced  slavery  into  a  free  life  where 
service  that  is  rendered  may  come  not 
from  compulsion,  but  from  volition. 

Thesis :  The  Church  ought  to  be  welcom- 
ing the  Feminist  movement,  recognizing  not 
merely  its  inevitability,  but  its  possibilities 
of  service  to  the  race,  and  should  be  seeking 
to  fill  women  with  such  a  love  and  admira- 
tion for  Jesus  Christ  as  will  enable  them  to 

75 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

make  of  each  Feminist  gain  not  merely  a 
new  freedom,  but  a  new  consecration  of  free- 
dom, a  new  opportunity  for  greater  and  more 
varied  service  to  humanity  and  to  God,  a 
greater  chance  for  laying  down  their  lives 
in  voluntary  and  unselfish  service. 

II.    HOW  WILL  FEMINISM  AFFECT  THE  FAMILY? 

One  thing  which  makes  many  people 
mistrust  Feminism  is  a  feeling  that  the 
granting  of  its  position  will  in  some 
manner  help  to  upset  the  institution 
of  the  family,  or  to  degrade,  or  even 
to  extinguish  altogether,  monogamous 
marriage.  This  is  worth  a  little  discus- 
sion. 

The  essence  of  marriage,  as  the  Church 
has  ever  declared,  lies  in  a  free  contract 
entered  into  by  a  man  and  a  woman.  A 
religious  blessing  of  the  union,  while  a 
very  great  advantage,  is  no  essential  part 

76 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

of  the  marriage.  In  former  times,  also, 
the  Church  was  very  frank  in  declaring 
the  purpose  of  this  contractual  relation- 
ship to  be,  what  all  nature  declares  it  to 
be,  the  propagation  and  the  rearing  of 
children.  Sociologically  speaking,  that 
is  the  sole  explanation  of  the  origin  of 
marriage,  and  the  sole  justification  for 
the  continuance  of  the  family.  Let  it  be 
clearly  borne  in  mind,  therefore,  that 
the  end  and  ai?n  and  reason  for  being  of 
marriage  is  the  welfare  of  the  progeny,  not 
the  pleasure  of  the  parents. 

In  the  conduct  and  supervision  of 
this  contractual  relationship,  with  its 
profoundly  social  end,  the  Feminists 
claim  that  the  privileges  and  burdens 
of  the  two  sexes  are  grossly  dispropor- 
tionate. They  are  convinced  that  this 
is  because  these  matters  have  long  been 
regulated,    not    by    men   and    women 

77 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

for  men  and  women,  but  by  men  for 
both  sexes.  They  believe,  for  instance, 
that  man  now  retains  to  a  very  large 
degree  freedom  in  entering  into  the 
relationship,  while  about  woman  such 
economic,  social,  and  conventional  re- 
strictions have  been  placed  as  to  limit 
her  freedom  and  often  impel  her  into 
unions  not  strictly  of  her  own  seeking. 
Frequently,  for  instance,  she  must  marry, 
starve,  or  sell  herself  outside  of  wedlock. 
These  maladjustments  last  after  mar- 
riage is  entered  upon.  Especially  indica- 
tive of  them  is  the  double  standard  of 
morals,  so-called,  whereby  a  man  may 
be  unfaithful  and  "get  by"  with  it, 
while  a  no  more  unfaithful  woman  is 
socially  ostracized  and  otherwise  per- 
secuted. The  Feminist  insists  that  all 
such  inequalities,  both  before  marriage 
and  after  it,  must  be  done  away  with, 

78 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

and  that  men  and  women  must  enter 
into  and  live  within  the  marriage  rela- 
tionship on  precisely  equal  terms. 

This  demand  causes  much  alarm 
among  conservative  persons,  who  seem 
to  think  that  the  granting  to  woman  of 
equal  say  with  man  in  matters  of  sex 
and  marriage  is  bound  forthwith  to  spell 
the  downfall  of  the  family  and  the  cor- 
ruption of  woman.  It  is  but  fair  to  say 
that  certain  Feminists,  hysterical  in  sex 
matters,  like  Miss  Ellen  Key  and  Mr. 
Edward  Carpenter,  by  their  unbalanced 
and  often  unhealthily  erotic  writings, 
have  given  color  to  the  anti-Feminist 
statements.  No  sane  person,  however, 
judges  any  movement  by  its  eccentrics 
and  extremists. 

Looking  at  the  facts  in  the  case  apart 
from  hysteria,  is  it  not  plain  that  none 
of  these  evil  effects  will  ensue  to   the 

79 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

family,  for  a  very  simple  and  yet  very  pro- 
found reason  ?  The  reason  is  this  :  — 

Since  the  sole  natural  purpose  of  mar- 
riage is  to  insure  the  proper  production 
and  rearing  of  children,  it  would  seem 
to  be  the  wisest  possible  plan  for  society, 
if  it  wishes  the  institution  to  be  guarded 
and  preserved,  to  entrust  its  supervision 
largely  to  those  people  who  are  most 
interested  in  children.  Such  women 
notoriously  and  incontrovertibly  are. 
Women  are  the  last  people  to  be  apt  to 
injure  that  institution  which,  better  than 
any  other  plan  yet  devised,  —  and  many 
others  have  been  tried  from  time  to  time, 
—  better  than  other  plans  because  it  is 
Nature's  own  plan,  secures  the  proper 
safeguarding  of  their  offspring.  Women 
will,  rather,  insist  upon  a  more  real  and 
a  more  meticulous  recognition  of  the 
sanctity  of  marriage  by  all   concerned. 

80 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

They  will  insist,  however,  that  the  pres- 
ervation of  its  sanctity  shall  be  equally 
the  task  of  both  sexes.  There  need  be 
feared  little  lowering  of  the  morality  of 
women  to  the  level  of  the  average  male. 
Women  will  insist  upon  the  raising  of 
the  morality  of  men  up  to  the  level  of 
the  average  female.  This  insistence  will 
be  rendered  the  more  compelling  be- 
cause by  virtue  of  physical  organization 
women  are  less  tempted  to  sins  of  the 
flesh  than  are  men,  and  therefore  less 
apt  to  stray,  because  of  passion,  from 
ideals.  All  this  will  mean  that  by  giv- 
ing women  a  large  share  in  the  man- 
agement of  sexual  and  marital  matters 
marriage  will  be  lifted  to  a  new  plane 
of  sanctity,  one  of  higher  moral  tone, 
one  of  deeper  spiritual  possibility  ;  both 
women  and  their  husbands  will  be  helped 
to  a  new  and  greater  respect  for  them- 

81 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

selves  and  for  one  another;  and  parent- 
hood will  be  given  a  new  dignity,  a 
novel  beauty. 

Thesis:  The  greatest  blunder  that  the 
Church  can  make  morally  to-day  is  to  ad- 
vocate, or  by  her  silence  let  it  be  supposed 
she  is  advocating,  the  strait-jacketing  of 
woman  in  order  to  protect  her.  In  the  first 
place,  she  will  not  wear  the  strait-jacket 
longer,  whether  she  needs  it  or  not.  In  the 
second  place,  she  does  not  need  it.  The 
Church  should  advocate  the  fullest  and 
frankest  equality  of  the  sexes  in  all  mat- 
ters, and  especially  those  dealing  with  mar- 
riage and  the  home.  Immediately  she  should 
denounce  the  so-called  "  double  standard  of 
morals  J  She  should  remove  from  the  mar- 
riage office  the  promise  of  the  woman  to  obey 
her  husband,  which  seems  to  the  world  an 
open  advertisement  of  an  anti-Feminist  posi- 
tion which  the  Church  really  is  far  from 

82 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

holding.  She  should  grant  to  woman  com- 
plete  suffrage  in  the  government  of  the 
Church  itself  equal  to  that  exercised  by 
man.  She  should  make  plain  that "  in  Christ 
Jesus  there  is  neither  circumcision  nor  un- 
circumcisiony  male  or  female ,  bond  or  free" 

III.    WHAT  IS  THE  CHIEF  ENEMY  OF  THE 

FAMILY  ? 

Turning  from  Feminism,  which  is 
not  actually  or  potentially  an  enemy  of 
monogamous  marriage  or  of  the  family, 
it  should  be  asked  if  there  are  any  dan- 
gers to  these  institutions  which  ought 
to  be  combated  by  the  Christian  moral- 
ist. 

The  chief  enemy  of  them  both  is  an 
economic  foe.  The  most  penetrating  in- 
dictment of  our  present  social  order  is 
that  it  tends  to  destroy  the  family.  It 
condemns  millions  of  men  and  women 

.83 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

to  enforced  celibacy  —  most  potent  pro- 
moter of  sexual  vice,  prostitution,  and 
other  unnamable  sins.  It  renders  even 
those  who  do  marry  unable  to  afford 
what  has  become  the  "  luxury  of  hav- 
ing children/'  The  lack  of  children 
is,  of  course,  the  most  powerful  con- 
tributory cause  to  divorce ;  naturally  so, 
since  in  the  absence  of  children  the 
natural  and  divine  reason  for  marriage 
is  removed.  It  herds  people  together  in 
great  cities,  whose  congested  districts 
upset  the  mental  and  moral  poise  of 
adults  and  poison  the  minds  and  souls 
of  growing  children,  and  whose  all 
too  common  rookeries,  whether  called 
"  tenements "  or  "apartment  houses," 
are  unfit  for  normal  family  living.  It 
forces  men  to  labor  so  long  and  so  hard 
as  to  send  them  home  exhausted,  so 
worn-out  and  fretful  as  to  prevent  them 

84 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

from  being  either  thoughtful  husbands 
or  considerate  parents.  It  thrusts  girls 
in  their  adolescence  and  women  in  early 
maturity  into  work  of  such  a  sort  as  to 
render  later  pregnancy  difficult  and  often 
impossible.  Meanwhile,  it  encourages 
the  parasitical,  peacock  woman  at  the 
top  of  the  social  ladder  and  presents  her 
as  the  ideal  to  be  aimed  at  by  the  entire 
social  group.  It  makes  it  easy  for  women 
to  marry  as  a  source  of  relief  from  bit- 
ter toil  rather  than  as  a  response  to  a 
God-implanted  instinct.  It  —  but  why 
go  on  ? 

The  family  is  to-day  in  grave  danger 
of  becoming  an  obsolescent  institution 
chiefly  because  our  economic  and  social 
system  tends  to  make  it  so.  The  great 
enemy  of  the  family  and  the  home  is 
not  the  growing  desire  of  women  for  a 
share  with  men  in  all  activities  of  life. 

85 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

The  danger  comes  from  no  demagogues 
and  theorists.  Our  fundamental  social  in- 
stitution is  receiving  dazing  body-blows 
every  day  from  that  economic  system 
which  is  commonly  called  Capitalism, 
a  system  manufactured  by,  engineered 
by,  controlled  by,  men,  not  women. 

Thesis :  If  the  Church  is  really  in  ear- 
nest about  preserving  the  home  and  the 
family  and  maintaining  marriage  as  a  sa- 
cred institution ,  deserving  of  a  fair  chance 
to  succeed,  she  will  earnestly  set  to  work 
attacking  the  econo??iic  evils  and  abuses 
which  make  marriage  hard,  the  home  diffi- 
cult, and  the  rearing  of  a  family  a  next  to 
impossible  luxury  for  many  people ;  and  she 
will  all  the  more  urge  full  participation  for 
women  in  the  State,  realizing  that  women 
will  demand  and  gain  such  industrial  re- 
forms as  will  destroy  the  present  danger  to 
these  sacred  institutions  with  a  quickness 

86 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

and  a  thoroughness  which  men  alone  seem 
incapable  of  manifesting. 

IV.    WHAT  MUST  BE  DONE  ABOUT  SEX 
EDUCATION? 

There  are  other  dangers  to  the  fam- 
ily which  the  Church  ought  to  be  con- 
sidering in  her  desire  to  protect  it.  Next 
to  economic  submarines  probably  the 
family  suffers  most  to-day  from  a  lam- 
entable ignorance  on  the  part  of  our 
people  about  the  physiology,  the  hygi- 
ene, and  above  all  the  psychology  in- 
volved in  sex  activity.  The  old  possibil- 
ities of  proper  guiding  for  the  young  in 
these  matters  in  the  home,  where  kindly 
words  of  wisdom  were  quietly  dropped, 
high  and  pure  ideals  inculcated,  noble 
sanctions  for  sexual  activity  imparted  al- 
most by  instinct,  and  the  whole  matter 
dealt  with  naturally  and  simply,  are  no 

87 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

longer  easily  possibilities  for  two  reasons. 
First  of  all,  for  the  most  part  our  people 
no  longer  live  each  family  apart.  They 
live  in  large  groups,  and  it  is  therefore 
hard  for  parents  to  maintain  personal 
contact  with  their  adolescent  children, 
even  though  these  be  few  in  number. 
Try  as  they  will,  conscientious  parents 
find  themselves  and  their  offspring  tak- 
ing the  subconscious  attitude  toward 
home  life  of  the  group  around  them. 
One's  boys  and  girls  must  have  some- 
thing approaching  the  liberty  of  their 
fellows  or  rebellion  is  imminent.  In  the 
second  place,  everything  in  our  contem- 
porary life  tends  to  help  the  pre-matu- 
rity  of  our  boys  and  girls.  They  are 
children  one  day,  and  men  and  women, 
very  inexperienced  and  immature  but 
blase  and  over-confident  — the  next  day. 
This    cannot     be    helped.    Too    many 

88 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

causes  contribute  to  produce  the  deplor- 
able result.  All  we  can  do  is  to  devise 
ways  to  make  the  condition  as  little 
harmful  as  possible.  If  the  old  way  of 
sex  education  in  the  home  is  too  dif- 
ficult to-day  in  the  majority  of  cases, 
then  other  agencies  must  take  up  the 
work,  supplementing  the  home  when 
possible,  taking  its  place  where  there  is 
nothing  to  supplement. 

Here  the  Church  has  plainly  a  duty 
which  in  most  instances  she  is  either 
dodging  or  performing  very  inadequately. 
This  author  was  astonished  to  find  that 
of  twenty  priests  questioned  by  him  only 
one  saw  to  it  that  his  boys  and  girls  had 
received  instruction  in  sex  morality  be- 
fore they  were  presented  for  confirma- 
tion. Of  thirty-one  priests  questioned 
only  two  gave  any  instruction,  or  saw 
that  others  gave  it,  to  those  contemplat- 

89 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

ing  matrimony  on  either  the  morality 
or  the  psychology  of  married  life.  This 
plainly  must  be  remedied.  Parents  find 
it  increasingly  difficult  to  instruct  their 
children  —  although,  of  course,  often 
the  difficulty  is  really  criminal  negli- 
gence on  their  part.  The  public  schools 
are  unfitted  to  teach  the  subject.  The 
classes  are  too  large,  and  attended  by 
both  sexes;  the  teachers  are  mostly 
women,  which  renders  the  subject  diffi- 
cult to  teach  to  boys ;  the  whole  atmos- 
phere is  neither  mentally  nor  spiritually 
proper  for  such  instruction.  Conse- 
quently for  the  most  part  nobody  teaches 
children.  Often  brides  are  not  informed 
of  facts  they  should  possess;  and  grooms 
in  the  great  majority  of  cases  go  into 
marriage  with  warped  and  vicious  ideas 
of  conjugal  life  which  promise  distress 
and  often  disaster  to  the  marital  craft 

90 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

before  they  can  be  changed.  If  there 
ever  was  a  job  plainly  belonging  to  the 
Church,  here  is  that  job. 

And  where  the  Church  is  attempt- 
ing to  give  the  necessary  instruction  and 
inspiration,  all  too  often  she  is  putting 
the  whole  subject  on  a  wrong  plane. 
All  too  often  the  thing  desired  seems  to 
be  solely  that  Johnny  and  Mary  Ann 
shall  be  so  taught  that  Johnny  and  Mary 
Ann  may  remain  personally  "pure." 
The  whole  matter  is  put  onto  an  indi- 
vidualistic basis.  This  creates  morbidity 
where  it  is  heeded.  For  the  most  part 
it  has  little  or  no  effect.  The  modern 
adolescent  demands  a  greater  sanction 
for  sexual  propriety  than  fear  of  the 
taboo  of  uncleanness.  Creature  of  his 
times  as  he  is,  he  thinks  socially,  espe- 
cially in  these  years  of  emotion,  chivalry, 
and  great  possibilities  for  appeal  to  un- 

91 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

selfishness.  All  too  often  sex  educators 
give  the  persons  taught  a  great  deal  of 
instruction  as  to  the  sexual  function 
itself  without  giving  them  any  reason, 
aside  from  the  aforesaid  personal  taboo, 
for  not  using  the  function  as  a  source 
of  undisciplined  and  selfish  pleasure. 

When  we  begin  to  place  our  sexual 
instruction  on  a  social  plane  we  can  do 
something.  We  must  bid  our  young 
men,  our  young  women,  to  live  cleanly, 
chastely,  modestly,  not  for  their  own 
sakes  merely,  but  for  the  sake  of  their 
children  who  are  yet  to  be.  All  sex  in- 
struction should  begin  with  the  question, 
"  Where  does  baby  come  from  ?  "  rather 
than  with  the  physical  nature  of  the  per- 
son being  trained.  Any  such  teaching 
which  does  not  stress  all  the  time  the 
duties  and  the  dignities  of  parenthood 
is  positively  vicious.  If  we  can  make  our 

92 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

young  people  see  that,  whatever  may  be 
its  incidental  purposes,  the  fundamental 
purpose  of  sex  is  the  social  purpose,  that 
their  sex  instinct  and  their  sex  activity 
are  most  noble  sources  of  service  to  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  to  the  State  if 
rightly  used,  and  most  potent  sources  of 
disaster  to  God's  purposes  and  the  good 
of  mankind  if  misused,  it  will  be  possi- 
ble so  to  appeal  to  their  adolescent  ideal- 
ism as  to  save  them  from  those  vicious 
things  which  come  chiefly,  not  from 
lack  of  physical  knowledge,  but  from 
lack  of  spiritual  restraints. 

It  is  surely  not  necessary  to  say  that 
sex  education  of  some  sort  is  imperative. 
The  days  of  squeamishness  are  mostly 
over.  If  any  pastor  shrinks,  if  any  par- 
ent shudders,  at  the  necessity  of  speak- 
ing about  sex  to  young  people,  let  him 
take  courage.  The   modern  adolescent 

93 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

will  probably  be  much  less  embarrassed 
than  his  instructors. 

Thesis:  The  Church  should  help  par- 
ents,  in  so  far  as  is  possible,  to  give  full, 
clean  instruction  on  matters  of  sex  to  their 
children,  and  where  this  is  impossible,  she 
should  give  the  instruction  herself  All 
children  before  confirmation  should  be  given 
sex-knowledge  suitable  to  their  years,  and 
the  priest  should  see  that  it  is  given,  by  others 
or  by  himself.  All  candidates  for  matrimony 
should  be  carefully  instructed  on  their  duties 
in  married  life,  the  physiology  and  the  psy- 
chology of  the  relationship;  and  the  priest 
ought  to  see  that  such  has  been  given  by 
some  one  before  a  marriage  is  solemnized. 
In  all  such  instruction  the  child  who  is  to 
be  should  be  the  thing  stressed,  and  thus  the 
whole  matter  presented  from  the  social  stand- 
point. 


94 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

V.   WHAT  SHALL  THE  CHURCH  SAY  OF 
BIRTH-CONTROL  ? 

When  the  subject  of  contraception  or 
birth-control  is  mentioned,  the  natural 
tendency  of  Church  people  seems  to  be 
to  look  horrified,  as  though  Satan  had 
dashed  through  the  room  and  left  be- 
hind him  a  brimstone  smell,  and  to  talk 
as  rapidly  as  possible  about  something 
else.  Herein  lies  a  great  weakness.  The 
Church  may  if  she  will  damn  birth-con- 
trol and  retain  the  respect  of  people.  She 
may  approve  of  and  allow  birth-control 
under  proper  restrictions  and  retain  their 
respect.  But  the  one  thing  she  must  not, 
cannot,  continue  to  do  is  to  avoid  the 
subject  altogether. 

Birth-control  is  a  common  practice 
in  our  midst,  laws  and  restrictions  to 
the  contrary  notwithstanding.  It  is  com- 
monly assumed  by  great  masses  of  our 

95 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

people,  including  thousands  of  professing 
Christian  men  and  women,  to  be  a  thing 
quite  moral  and  permissible,  even  neces- 
sary and  advisable.  As  Sidney  Webb  says 
of  the  matter,  "  If  this  course  of  conduct 
is  habitually  and  deliberately  pursued  by 
vast  numbers  of  otherwise  well-conducted 
people,  forming  probably  a  majority  of 
the  whole  educated  class  of  the  nation, 
we  must  conclude  that  it  does  not  con- 
flict with  their  actual  code  of  morality."  * 
It  is  common  in  Catholic  countries,  like 
Belgium,  Italy,  and  Spain ;  in  Protestant 
countries  like  Norway,  Sweden,  and  Ger- 
many; in  mixed  countries  like  England 
and  the  United  States  of  America. 

At  present  the  Church's  attitude  to- 
ward the  practice  is  practically  acquies- 
cence. Probably  there  are  many  thou- 
sands of  people  who  do  not  know  that  the 

1  Popular  Science  Monthly  (1906),  p.  526. 

96 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

Church  cares  one  way  or  the  other  about 
it.  Officially  her  teaching  is  still  against 
it.  Practically  she  condones  it.  The  con- 
fusion resulting  removes  from  Christian 
people  any  certainty  about  what  they 
ought  to  do  and  what  principles  ought 
to  control  their  conduct. 

If,  however,  the  Church  is  to  continue 
to  condemn  the  practice  of  contracep- 
tion, she  ought  to  state  her  reasons  there- 
for clearly  and  anew.  There  must  be  a 
better  reason  advanced  than  that  the 
Church  always  has  forbidden  the  practice 
and  therefore  always  must.  There  must 
be  better  argument  put  forth  than  the 
statement  that  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  it  is 
recorded  that  a  certain  patriarch  believed 
in  birth-control  and  that  God  —  admit- 
tedly conceived  of  by  the  early  narrator 
in  terms  of  a  patriarchal  culture  demand- 
ing prolific  reproduction  —  killed  him 

97 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

because  of  it.  That  is  no  sort  of  basis  on 
which  to  build  rational  moral  teaching. 

Does  the  practice  of  the  law  of  sacri- 
ficial love  demand  that  people  have  large 
numbers  of  children  or  else  live  unnat- 
urally ?  If  so  let  the  Church  clearly  and 
plainly  explain  to  her  people  whence 
comes  this  necessity. 

If,  however,  she  is  to  change  her  moral 
teaching  on  this  point,  then  let  her  un- 
derstand herself  and  let  the  world  under- 
stand just  why  she  is  changing.  Let  her 
not  longer  appear  in  the  position  of  one 
who  believes  one  thing,  but  for  fear  of 
offending  people  acquiesces  in  its  oppo- 
site. 

Thesis :  The  Church  ought  not  to  dodge 
the  problems  connected  with  contraception, 
but  to  examine  the  whole  subject  in  the  light 
of  the  law  of  love.  If  in  that  light  contra- 
ception seems  good  under  proper  restrictions , 

98 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

let  her  teach  her  people  what  those  restric- 
tions are.  If  in  that  light  it  still  seems  a 
thing  inadmissible,  then  let  her  formulate  her 
reasons  for  this  position  in  language  compre- 
hended by  the  people  and  persuasive  of  them. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PROBLEMS  OF  THE  LOCAL  COMMUNITY 

Then  said  Jesus  to  Saul,  Rise  and  enter  into  the  city,  and 
it  shall  be  told  thee  what  thou  must  do, 

acts,  9  :  6 

So  far  it  has  been  our  endeavor  to  make 
some  examination  of  Christian  teaching 
as  applied  to  a  life  which  is  being  trans- 
formed first  by  the  hunger  urge  and  sec- 
ond by  the  sex  urge,  and  to  suggest  cer- 
tain ways  in  which  the  Church  ought, 
if  she  is  to  continue  to  act  as  the  moral 
guide  of  her  people,  to  adapt  and  apply 
the  law  of  salvation  through  sacrifice 
along  the  lines  of  new  developments. 
It  shall  be  our  endeavor  in  this  and  the 
next  chapter  to  examine  the  fields  in 
which  this  application  must  be  made, 
considering  them  geographically.  This 

ioo 


>      • 


.  .  -  •   ■> »   » 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

chapter  will  deal  with  the  Christian  face 
to  face  with  some  of  those  problems  of 
social  living  which  meet  him  or  her  in 
the  local  community  where  the  Church 
is  at  work.  The  next  chapter  will  be 
concerned  with  certain  pressing  national 
and  international  problems. 

Obviously  in  this  chapter  the  treat- 
ment must  be  most  general,  quite  un- 
specific.  The  "  local  community "  is  a 
varied  thing.  Whole  books  have  been 
written,  for  instance,  on  the  Church  in 
the  rural  neighborhood.  Other  volumes 
have  dealt  with  one  phase  or  another 
of  those  problems  peculiar  to  the  large 
city.  Let  us  first  look  at  such  things 
as  are  common  to  all  sorts  of  local 
situations.  Then  let  us  consider  a  few 
problems  peculiar  to  that  sort  of  com- 
munity about  which  least  has  been  writ- 
ten, which  is  neither  rural  nor  largely 

IOI 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

urban,  the  town  or  city  of  from  three 
thousand  to  thirty  thousand  people. 


I.    WHAT  OUGHT  TO  BE  THE  CHIEF  INTEREST 
OF  ANY  COMMUNITY? 

Just  as  children  are  the  end  and  rea- 
son for  being  of  a  family,  so  they  are 
also  the  end  and  reason  for  being  of  a 
community.  No  one  really  understands 
any  community,  its  life,  its  problems,  its 
duties,  or  its  needs,  until  he  has  per- 
ceived that  it  is  composed  of  growing 
children,  ranging  in  development  from 
babyhood  to  maturity,  with  some  grown 
people  whose  main  job  it  is  to  take 
care  of  them.  Incidentally,  to  see  a 
community  so  is  to  see  it  with  increased 
perception  of  its  possibilities  in  reli- 
gion. There  are  some  who  become  of 
the  blessed  by  laying  down  their  lives 
for  their  mature  friends.   There  are  a 

102 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

few  who  attain  blessedness  by  putting 
themselves  out  for  their  parents  and 
elders.  But  for  one  who  does  either  of 
these  things  there  are  hundreds  who  ap- 
proach to  Christian  character  by  sacrific- 
ing themselves  for  their  children.  When 
Jesus'  disciples  asked  what  they  should 
do  to  attain  eternal  life,  the  Master 
knew  human  nature  exceedingly  well 
when  in  answer  he  placed  a  child  in  the 
midst,  and  told  them  to  see  to  it  that 
no  stumbling-blocks  were  put  in  the 
way  of  these  little  ones. 

The  centre  of  the  family  is  the  child. 
The  centre  of  the  local  community  is 
its  children.  The  centre  of  the  nation 
is  its  young.  The  centre  of  civilization 
is  the  next  generation.  The  Lord  ut- 
tered his  second  severest  condemnation 
to  those  who  acted  on  another  basis. 
Concerning  him  who  injures  a  child  He 

io3 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

said,  "  Better  were  it  for  such  an  one  if 
a  millstone  were  tied  about  his  neck 
and  he  were  drowned  in  the  depths  of 
the  sea."  As  one  reads  this  it  is  easy  to 
remember  that  other  "  better  were  it," 
uttered  of  Judas,  "Better  were  it  for 
that  man  if  he  had  never  been  born." 
Judas  who  betrayed  the  Master  and  one 
who  betrays  a  child  —  in  Jesus'  con- 
demnations they  belong  together.  This 
which  is  true  of  the  individual  is  also 
true  of  the  community. 

Thesis:  Perhaps  the  largest  contribution 
which  the  Church  can  make  to  a  local  com- 
munity  is  the  constant  iteration  of  the  great 
fact  that  that  community  is  properly  a  nur- 
turing-p  lace  for  children  rather  than  a  dwell- 
ing-place for  grown-up  people.  It  is  from 
this  point  of  view  —  God's  point  of  view — 
that  the  Church  must  teach  her  people  to  re- 
gard it.   The  Church  should  help  people  to 

104 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

realize  that  in  comparison  with  child  welfare 
such  things  as  how  well  paved  the  streets 
are,  how  high  the  buildings  are,  how  large 
the  bank  deposits  are,  how  many  the  churches 
are,  how  popular  are  art  and  music,  how 
many  are  the  clubs  and  societies,  sink  into 
relative  insignificance;  that  nothing  matters 
nearly  so  much  as  what  sort  of  children  the 
community  is  rearing.  This  should  be  the 
primary  social  message  of  the  Church  to 
any  community  in  which  it  is  working. 

II.    HOW  DOES  HOUSING  AFFECT  COMMUNITY 

i 

WELFARE  ? 

He  who  writes  these  lines  has  min- 
istered as  a  priest  in  three  very  different 
communities,  urban,  suburban,  and  semi- 
urban.  He  has  also  known  intimately 
by  observation  two  rural  neighborhoods. 
In  every  one  of  the  five  the  housing  con- 
ditions of  the  people  have  been  found 

105 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

bad  in  many  respects.  The  city  had  its 
rookeries ;  but  the  others  had  their  shacks : 
and  it  is  hard  to  tell  which  is  the  worse. 
On  the  whole  he  has  come  to  believe  that 
in  proportion  to  the  population  housing 
conditions  have  been  worse  in  the  smaller 
places.  The  country  has  been  worst  of 
all.  In  this  somewhat  surprising  conclu- 
sion he  has  found  that  one  of  the  Church's 
bishops,  whose  diocese,  in  one  of  the 
older  parts  of  the  country,  is  almost  en- 
tirely rural,  most  heartily  agrees  with 
him.  This  conclusion  has  been  reached 
despite  the  fact  that  the  city  in  question 
is  Chicago,  notoriously  one  of  the  worst 
in  the  country  from  the  point  of  view 
of  tenement  inspection  and  regulation. 
The  smaller  the  community  the  less  rigid 
is  apt  to  be  the  supervision,  the  less 
aroused  that  public  opinion  which  alone 
can  regulate  bad  housing.    In  all  places, 

106 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

large  and  small,  are  rent-grabbers  and 
jerry-builders  who  are  willing  to  furnish 
dwellings  with  insufficient  light  and  air 
space,  with  cheap  plumbing  or  some- 
times none  at  all,  with  physical  rottenness 
scarcely  or  not  at  all  concealed ;  to  keep 
them  in  the  least  repair  that  a  careless 
public  will  permit  them  to  "get  by" 
with ;  to  neglect  fumigation  between 
tenants,  even  where  the  former  residents 
have  had  contagious  diseases,  especially 
tuberculosis;  to  permit  and  even  to  wel- 
come overcrowding  where  that  means 
increased  rents ;  and  otherwise  to  regard 
their  property,  not  as  a  trust  to  be  ad- 
ministered for  human  welfare,  but  as  a 
source  of  all  the  income  that  can  be 
squeezed  out  of  it. 

All  of  this  has  a  vicious  effect  upon 
the  children  who  grow  up  hampered  by 
these  conditions.  Their  bodies  are  weak- 

107 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

ened  thereby.  Fresh  air,  cleanliness,  and 
undisturbed  rest  are  difficult  for  them  to 
obtain.  Mental  efficiency  and  nervous 
poise  are  also  interfered  with.  Finally 
the  children  are  in  evil  housing  condi- 
tions morally  miseducated.  We  all  real- 
ize to-day  that  the  school  is  not  really 
the  educator  of  the  child,  but  rather  the 
home.  In  that  home  which  is  of  neces- 
sity nerve-racking  and  morally  careless 
because  of  the  house  in  which  it  exists 
lies  the  germ  of  very  much  of  our  juve- 
nile delinquency  and  adolescent  immo- 
rality. 

When  a  community  can  be  persuaded 
to  look  on  its  housing  with  the  eyes  of 
Christ,  its  duty  becomes  plain  enough. 
It  must  insist  that  landlords  be  forced 
properly  to  house  their  tenants.  Further- 
more, this  public  service  must  be  so  su- 
pervised that  the  landlords  will  not  make 

108 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

up  for  their  increased  costs  by  prohibi- 
tively raising  prices.  This  will  involve  in- 
evitably community  regulation  of  rents, 
a  revolutionary  but  absolutely  essential 
procedure.  Such  regulation  is  now  going 
on  in  England  as  a  war  measure.  Why 
not  make  it  a  peace  measure,  too?  It  is 
a  thing  notorious  that  slum  property,  in 
city,  small  town,  and  country-side  alike, 
brings  in  very  high  returns  on  invest- 
ment. These  returns,  as  things  are  now, 
are  often  the  price  of  physical,  mental, 
and  moral  degeneration  of  childhood. 
They  should  be  rigorously  supervised  and 
controlled.  Surely  the  Church  ought  to 
be  a  leader  in  making  people  see  this  ne- 
cessity. 

Into  this  matter  of  housing  enters, 
too,  the  great  question  of  what  are  the 
best  methods  of  taxation.  Somehow  or 
other  we  must  make  it  possible  for  our 

109 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

people  to  spread  out  of  congested  dis- 
tricts, even  in  the  largest  cities,  so  that 
families  may  have  garden  room,  at  least 
a  bit  of  greensward,  and  a  play-place  for 
children.  They  cannot  with  social  safety 
be  left  much  longer  in  crowded  rooms 
and  "apartments'  with  a  wilting  gera- 
nium on  the  window-sill  as  their  sole 
share  of  God's  growing  things,  and  a  fire- 
escape  or  an  asphalt  street  for  play.  The 
holding  of  land  vacant,  for  speculative 
purposes,  when  it  might  be  used,  must 
be  made  so  unprofitable  that  it  will  cease. 
Increasingly  thinking  people  are  adopt- 
ing the  theories  of  taxation  advanced  by 
Henry  George  as  the  sanest  method  of 
stopping  land  speculation  and  prevent- 
ing congestions.  In  a  book  like  this 
there  is  no  time  to  elucidate  his  method, 
the  so-called  "single-tax,"  to  those  un- 
familiar  with  it.    Surely  it  is  not  too 

1 10 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

much,  however,  to  ask  the  Church  to 
urge  people  to  consider  the  problem  of 
land  taxation  as  seriously  as  our  griev- 
ous maladjustments  justify,  and  to  seek 
some  rational  solution  to  an  intolerably 
individualistic  muddle. 

Thesis:  The  Church  should  be  helping 
her  people  and  those  about  her  to  see  that 
it  is  their  duty  to  bring  about  the  provision 
of  proper  housing  acco?nmodations for  the  peo- 
ple ;  to  rouse  public  sentiment  i?i  the  matter ; 
to  advocate  community  regulation  of  rents; 
and  seriously  to  study  the  problems  involved 
in  land  taxation. 

III.    WHAT  IS  TO  BE  DONE  ABOUT  THE  SALOON? 

The  principal  danger  to  the  com- 
munity from  the  saloon  does  not  lie 
in  the  fact  that  in  it  adults  occasion- 
ally imbibe  too  much  alcohol.  An  in- 
toxicated grown-up  person  is  not  alto- 

1 1 1 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

gether  to  be  blamed  on  the  saloon.  He 
has  had  a  considerable  share  in  the  pro- 
duction of  his  own  miserable  condition. 
A  drunken  adult  ought  to  arouse  as  much 
blame  for  the  individual  as  indignation 
against  the  liquor  traffic.  Also  a  goodly 
share  of  what  indignation  there  is  should 
be  visited  upon  our  industrial  and  social 
system,  for  which  we  all  are  responsible. 
Great  numbers  of  people  take  to  drink 
mainly  because  their  lives  are,  thanks  to 
social  injustice,  so  bare  and  cold  and 
cheerless  and  void  of  possible  enjoyment 
that  they  seek  in  alcohol  the  only  kind 
of  "pep"  available  for  them;  because 
they  have  almost  no  opportunity  for  the 
stimulations  which  come  from  art  and 
beauty  and  harmony  of  home  and  de- 
light of  parenthood ;  because  they  see 
in  life  no  possible  blessing  but  "  booze. " 
The  chief  trouble  with  most  of  the  pres- 

1 12 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

ent  attacks  on  the  liquor  business  is  that 
they  are  made  in  the  interest  of  adults 
supposedly  corrupted  by  it. 

Those  who  defend  the  saloon  make 
exactly  the  same  mistake.  They  say 
truly  that  it  is  the  "poor  man's  club." 
They  almost  invariably  fail  to  say  any- 
thing about  the  cost  of  that  poor  man's 
club,  and  who  pays  that  cost. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  proper  angle 
to  look  from  in  considering  the  dram- 
shop is  the  angle  of  the  children's  in- 
terests. It  is  they  who  pay  the  cost  of 
the  poor  man's  club.  It  is  they  who  are 
the  greatest  sufferers.  They  pay  for  it, 
directly  and  indirectly,  with  their  health, 
their  comfort,  their  education,  their 
morals,  often  their  very  lives.  Let  the 
saloon,  therefore,  be  damned  up  hill  and 
down  dale,  not  because  men  and  women 
get  "stewed  "  in  it,  but  because  the  fire 

ll3 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

that  cooks  the  "stew"  is  fed  with  the 
warm  and  wasted  heart's  blood  of  God's 
littleones  —  those  children  whose  parents 
are  inebriates,  and  those  who  somehow 
or  other  must  be  enticed  into  becoming 
themselves  inebriates  if  the  saloons  are 
to  continue  to  furnish  money  in  sufficient 
quantities  to  the  breweries  and  distil- 
leries to  enable  them  to* pay  interest  to 
their  owners. 

Theoretically  it  is  possible  to  have 
saloons  in  America  so  run  that  they  will 
not  be  paid  for  by  the  sufferings  of  chil- 
dren. Many  of  us  used  to  suppose  that 
if  we  made  the  proper  appeal  to  the  li- 
quor people  they  would  have  the  brains 
and  hearts  to  reform  their  business. 
Most  of  us  have  changed  our  minds. 
The  trouble  is  fundamentally  economic. 
The  saloon-keeper  is  as  a  rule  not  to 
blame.   Usually  he  is  a  very  good  sort. 

114 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

He  rarely,  however,  owns  his  own  sa- 
loon. He  is,  sometimes  directly,  some- 
times as  a  renter,  merely  the  tool  and 
agent  of  the  heavily  capitalized  brew- 
eries and  distilleries.  They  must  sell  ever 
more  and  more  of  their  product  if  they 
are  to  avoid  passing  their  dividends  by 
and  so  rousing  the  wrath  of  their  stock- 
holders. It  is  they  who  own  the  saloons. 
It  is  they  who  insist  that  the  keepers  sell 
—  legitimately  or  illegitimately,  law- 
fully or  unlawfully,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
just  so  they  sell.  In  the  face  of  this  con- 
dition the  "good  saloon-keeper  "  is  pow- 
erless. If  he  is  too  good  he  is  eliminated. 
No  matter  how  good  he  is,  he  must  meet 
the  competition  of  unscrupulous  com- 
petitors financed  and  controlled  by  the 
liquor  manufacturers. 

As  a  reaction  against  this  sort  of  thing 
the  Prohibition  movement  is  sweeping 

115 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

with  increasing  momentum  across  the 
country.  Its  basis,  often  subconscious, 
is  a  great  ire  that  capitalists  should 
be  coining  children's  troubles  and  sor- 
rows into  gold  by  abuse  of  the  traffic. 
Many  a  citizen,  himself  unopposed  to 
the  drinking  of  alcoholic  liquor,  is  vot- 
ing enthusiastically  as  a  "  dry  "  because 
of  this  indignation.  The  Prohibition 
movement  shows  how  healthy  is  public 
conscience  when  aroused.  Millions  of 
property  have  been  ruthlessly  confiscated. 
Millions  of  paying  securities  have  been 
sent  without  hesitation  to  the  waste- 
paper  basket.  The  spirit  of  the  thing  is 
this,  "  We  care  not  one  rap  for  vested 
rights,  so-called,  when  they  interfere 
with  the  welfare  of  our  children. " 

Thesis:  For  the  sake  of  the  children  the 
Church  should  be  striving  to  the  best  of 
her  ability  to  bring   about   the   stringent 

116 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

regulation  of  the  saloon  wherever  it  exists 
and  also  the  taking  out  of  private  hands 
of  all  sale  of  alcoholic  liquor.  If  this  shall 
prove  too  difficult  an  undertaking  her  only 
course  is  to  work  with  all  her  might  to  help 
bring  in  nation-wide  prohibition. 

IV.  SHALL  SEXUAL  VICE  BE  SEGREGATED? 

In  every  community  there  is  sexual 
vice.  One  of  the  questions  which  de- 
mands constant  attention,  therefore,  is 
how  best  to  control  that  vice.  This  usu- 
ally resolves  itself  into  deciding  whether 
or  not  such  vice  shall  be  segregated 
into  certain  districts  of  the  community. 

One  has  only  to  read  the  reports  and 
recommendations  of  the  many  commis- 
sions which  have  made  a  careful  study 
of  this  problem  of  late  years  to  realize 
that  it  cannot  be  segregated.  There  is 
just  as    much    clandestine    immorality 

n7 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

scattered  abroad  in  a  community  when 
the  vice  district  is  running  as  there  is 
when  the  district  is  closed.  The  fact  of 
the  matter  is  that  a  segregated  district, 
acting  as  a  stimulant  of  vicious  practices, 
serves  to  arouse  such  cravings  and  to  set 
such  standards  as  help  rather  than  hinder 
private  and  unprofessional  unchastity. 

Furthermore,  it  is  unjust  to  segre- 
gate it,  unjust  to  those  in  whose  neigh- 
borhood the  "district "  is  established. 
These  are  always  the  poor.  Did  ever 
one  hear  of  a  vice  district  placed  in  the 
centre  of  a  fashionable  residence  sec- 
tion? How  hard  it  is  on  the  people 
who  needs  must  live  in  and  about  the 
district  because  of  their  poverty,  many 
smug  advocates  of  segregation  never  stop 
to  consider. 

After  all,  one  does  not  begin  to  under- 
stand the  enormity  of  segregated  vice 

118 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

until  one  considers  the  problem  from  the 
child-welfare  point  of  view.  Unsegre- 
gated  vice  can  be  so  watched  and  guarded 
against  in  neighborhoods  by  the  parents 
of  the  children  that,  although  it  may  min- 
ister to  many  people's  evil  desires,  it  re- 
mains relatively  unknown  and  harmless 
to  children.  Segregated  vice,  however, 
tempts  to  the  maximum  the  immature 
and  adolescent,  whose  desires  are  strong 
and  whose  self-control  is  weak.  It  is, 
and  cannot  help  being,  a  thing  publicly 
known  and  easily  available.  Its  very  ex- 
istence smirches  the  holy  ideals  of  sex 
in  the  eyes  of  those  children  and  youth- 
ful persons  who  know  of  its  rottennesses 
at  least  by  reputation.  Last,  and  by  no 
means  least,  it  gives  children  the  im- 
pression that  since  sexual  vice  is  a  tol- 
erated and  condoned  institution,  it  must 
needs  be,  despite  God's  commandment 

119 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

and  the  moral  precepts  of  school  and 
home,  after  all  a  tolerable  thing. 

Thesis:  For  the  sake  of  boys  and  girls 
the  Church  must  act  as  inspirer  of  and 
leader  in  action  which  will  cleanse  every 
community  from  segregated  vice  and,  indeed9 
tolerated  commercialized  vice  of  every  sort. 


V.  HOW  CAN  THE  PLAY  NEEDS  AND  THE  MAT- 
ING NEEDS  OF  OUR  YOUNG  PEOPLE  BE  BEST 
PROVIDED  FOR? 

It  will  not  do  for  the  Church  in  teach- 
ing her  people  their  duty  to  a  local  com- 
munity to  lay  the  major  part  of  her 
emphasis  merely  upon  advocating  the 
prohibition  of  evil  influences.  All  of  us, 
and  especially  children,  are  beings  sub- 
ject easily  to  external  influences  and 
with  great  personal  volition  neither  to- 
ward good  nor  toward  evil.  We  need, 
not  merely  to  be  saved  from  evil,  but 

1 20 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

also  to  be  impelled  toward  good.  Our 
object  must  not  be  merely  to  secure  for 
ourselves,  and  particularly  our  young, 
an  environment  free  from  the  vices  of 
civilization,  but  rather  one  full  of  the 
virtues  of  civilization. 

We  must  endeavor,  if  we  are  to  do 
our  duty  in  the  local  community,  to 
provide  for  our  children  the  moulding 
influence  of  directed  play. 

In  the  first  place,  there  is  nothing 
which  can  take  its  place  as  a  physical  de- 
veloper. Nowadays  our  leaders  in  phys- 
ical education  use  little  apparatus  and 
little  drill.  Instead  they  get  their  pupils 
to  playing  games.  They  direct  these 
games  in  such  a  manner  that  their 
charges  gain  well-balanced  bodily  de- 
velopment. Directed  play  is  merely  nat- 
ural exercise  expertly  supervised.  In  the 
second  place,   play  is  a   very  powerful 

121 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

intellectual  stimulator.  More  is  learned 
in  an  hour  on  the  playground  than  in 
an  hour  in  the  classroom.  The  child's 
powers  of  quick  and  accurate  percep- 
tion, his  capacity  for  shrewd  judgment, 
his  quickness  of  coordination  of  ideas, 
his  sureness  of  reason,  in  short,  all  the 
qualities  and  abilities  of  the  human  mind 
are  educated  most  easily  through  play. 
Mere  stored-up  information  does  not 
constitute  an  education.  The  power  to 
see  facts,  to  see  them  in  their  proper 
relationship  to  one  another,  to  see  the 
spiritual  reality  behind  them,  and  on 
such  perceptions  to  base  one's  actions 
—  these  are  things  no  books  can  teach. 
For  well-rounded  mental  education  it 
is  necessary  that  boys  and  girls  play  to- 
gether under  such  supervision  as  will  see 
that  they  get  from  their  games  a  maxi- 
mum of  intellectual  advantage.   Finally, 

122 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

nowhere  so  well  as  on  the  playground 
can  be  taught  those  arts  of  cooperation, 
that  willingness  to  sink  one's  self  in  the 
group,  that  appreciation  of  the  power 
of  coordinated  specialists,  that  percep- 
tion of  the  glory  of  team  work,  so  neces- 
sary for  all  social  living  and  especially 
for  bringing  to  perfection  our  democratic 
society. 

Thesis:  The  Church  ought  to  urge  her 
people  to  insist  upon  facilities  for  play  being 
provided  i?i  every  community  for  every  child, 
and  upon  play  being  directed  by  persons 
capable  of  leading  it  scientifically  to  the 
greatest  advantage  of  the  children.  Where 
the  community  can  do  this  as  one  whole \ 
the  Church  should  gladly  welcome  that 
method;  where  the  com?nunity  will  not 
attend  to  the  problem,  the  Church  should 
do  what  she  can  to  provide  the  proper 
tra'ming  for  as  many  children  as  possible. 

123 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG  . 

When  children  reach  middle  adoles- 
cence there  enters  a  new  need  into  the 
problem  of  recreation,  the  need  for  pro- 
per and  natural  opportunities  for  ac- 
quaintance and  eventually  for  courtship 
between  the  sexes.  Adolescence  is  the 
flowering  period  of  human  life.  It  is 
the  natural  time  for  what,  if  man  is  cared 
for  properly,  is  the  long,  slow  ripening 
of  sexual  love.  Proper  facilities  for  the 
natural  meeting  of  boys  and  girls  and 
their  knowing  one  another  will  be  of 
the  greatest  service  to  them.  By  mak- 
ing clandestine  or  unnatural  association  a 
thing  little  sought,  it  will  prevent  that 
which  follows  naturally  upon  such  asso- 
ciations, that  which  is  stimulated  by  li- 
quor and  vicious  dancing  and  the  sense 
of  wrong-doing  associated  with  secret 
and  frowned-upon  meetings,  namely, 
pre-maturity.  Normally,  under  civilized 

124 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

conditions,  the  process  of  courtship  is  a 
long  and  gradual  one.  If  boys  and  girls 
can  meet  naturally,  under  sympathetic 
and  understanding  patronage,  there  is 
little  danger  that  they  will  mate  too 
early,  either  legitimately  or  illegiti- 
mately. Deprive  them  of  plenty  of  these 
natural  relationships  and  they  will  revert 
to  the  less  civilized  and  more  animal 
status,  and  flower  in  love  so  early  as  to 
make  the  bloom  a  gross  and  often  a  de- 
grading thing. 

In  most  communities  the  opportuni- 
ties for  natural  courtship  are  constricted, 
the  while  mighty  influences  tending  to 
pre-maturity  are  stimulated.  The  rem- 
edy lies  not  merely  in  fighting  the  latter, 
but  in  stimulating  the  former.  We  must 
see  not  only  that  vicious  dance-halls  are 
prohibited,  but  that  good  ones  are  pro- 
vided in  their  stead ;  not  alone  that  com- 

125 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

mercialized  poolrooms  are  suppressed, 
but  that  socialized  poolrooms  take  their 
place;  not  simply  that  courtship  in 
parks  and  secret  places  is  frowned  upon, 
but  that  courtship  somewhere  is  smiled 
upon;  not  merely  that  vicious  movies  are 
censored,  but  that  good  movies  are  en- 
couraged; not  only  that  the  corner  gang, 
often  of  both  sexes,  is  policed,  but  that  it 
is  drawn  off  the  corner  into  some  place 
where  it  can  havemoreand  healthier  fun. 
Thesis:  The  Church  ought  to  recognize 
the  great  need  of  our  young  people  for  ra- 
tional and  healthy  association  between  the 
sexes  y  and  ought  to  be  doing  her  utmost  to 
see  that  such  association  is  made  possible. 
She  should  be  urging  the  community  to  take 
hold  of  the  problem,  and  she  should  be  sup- 
plementing the  co?nmunity  by  every  possible 
assistance  among  her  own  boys  a?id  girls  and 
any  others  she  may  be  able  to  reach. 

126 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

VI.    HOW  MAY  THE  CHURCH  BEST  MINISTER  SO- 
CIALLY IN  THE  MIDDLE-SIZED  COMMUNITY? 

There  are,  of  course,  many  other 
problems  common  to  all  communities 
which  the  Church  ought  to  be  think- 
ing of,  preaching  about,  and  working 
for.  The  restriction  of  working  hours 
for  women  and  the  minimum  wage  for 
them,  and  possibly  for  men  as  well;  the 
maintenance  of  educational  standards  and 
the  keeping  of  child-labor  laws  in  spirit 
as  well  as  in  letter;  proper  provision  for 
our  public  schools,  in  the  support  of 
which,  contrary  to  popular  opinion, 
many  of  our  communities,  especially 
those  in  the  country,  are  very  niggardly, 
indeed ;  the  administration  of  poor  relief 
by  other  than  political  appointees ;  the 
taking  of  public  health  administration 
out  of  politics ;  the  giving  of  Saturday 
half-holidays  with  pay  by  shops  and  fac- 

127 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

tories  during  the  summer ;  the  assuring  to 
all  persons  employed  at  least  one  day's 
rest  in  seven :  these  and  other  local  needs 
will  occur  to  the  mind  of  the  reader  in 
large  numbers.  Many  and  varied  are  also 
the  industrial  maladjustments,  where  the 
Church  must  ever  be  careful  in  investi- 
gation, slow  to  condemn  either  side, 
anxious  to  act  as  mediator  and  informer 
of  public  opinion,  insistent  upon  the 
right  of  labor  to  organize  as  well  as  capi- 
tal; persuasive  toward  industrial  demo- 
cracy. 

Passing  rapidly  over  these,  with  again 
the  statement  that  the  welfare  of  the 
children  is  the  key  which  makes  even 
the  most  puzzling  social  problems  clear, 
let  us  pass  on  to  certain  difficulties  pecul- 
iar to  that  least  talked-of,  least  written- 
about  of  all  communities,  the  small  city 
of  from  three  to  thirty  thousand  inhab- 

128 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

itants.  The  problem  of  how  to  bring  to 
bear  the  moral  influence  of  the  Church 
in  such  a  place  is  very  different  from 
the  same  problem  in  the  large  city  or  in 
the  hamlet  or  the  country-side.  Let  us 
see  what  are  some  of  the  peculiarities 
socially  and  ecclesiastically  of  such  a 
community. 

In  the  first  place,  such  a  city  usually 
has  a  dearth  of  aggressive  and  able  young 
men.  Only  a  limited  number  of  those 
who  grow  up  can  be  accommodated  in 
its  local  stores  and  shops.  Scores  of 
them  migrate  annually  to  other  places. 
Most  of  the  ones  who  leave  for  college 
never  permanently  return.  This  weak- 
ens the  social  influence  of  the  Church. 
The  writer,  who  lives  in  such  a  city, 
not  long  ago  counted  up  in  ten  minutes 
seventeen  young  men  trained  in  his  par- 
ish, now  between  the  ages  of  eighteen 

129 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

and  twenty-five,  every  one  of  whom  was 
exercising  loyal  and  efficient  leadership 
in  some  parish  in  a  larger  city.  For 
such  young  men  every  pastor  in  such 
a  small  city  devoutly  gives  thanks;  but 
their  absence  removes  from  the  home 
parish  those  who  in  work  among  boys 
and  men  would  naturally  be  the  leaders. 
Of  course  there  are  plenty  of  young  peo- 
ple always  left  —  most  of  the  girls  and 
many  young  men,  but  these  latter  usu- 
ally the  less  aggressive  of  the  city's  crop. 
The  whole  town  is  apt  to  suffer  from 
this,  especially  in  its  boy  work.  The 
absence  of  leaders  renders  it  necessary 
to  work  with  lads  in  larger  groups  than 
would  otherwise  be  considered  neces- 
sary or  advisable.  It  is  often  literally 
impossible  to  find  within  any  one  con- 
gregation the  proper  leaders  for  that 
congregation's  own  youngsters. 

13°. 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

In  the  second  place,  denominational 
jealousies  are  much  greater  in  these 
smaller  cities  than  they  are  in  the  larger 
ones.  To  organize  work  among  boys  and 
girls  and  young  people,  and  even  to  some 
extent  among  adults,  along  denomina- 
tional lines  always  means  the  splitting  of 
friendships,  the  unnatural  separation  of 
schoolmates,  shopmates,  and  neighbors. 
In  one  such  city  in  a  Mid-Western  State 
one  of  the  congregations,  anxious  to  be 
of  social  service,  started  a  sewing-school 
and  play-hour  for  children  in  its  least 
well-off  neighborhood,  a  section  of  the 
city  dotted  freely  with  deteriorating  in- 
fluences and  with  a  school,  closed  except 
in  session  time,  as  its  only  good  influ- 
ence, with  no  churches  within  a  mile 
of  it,  no  clubs,  no  playgrounds,  no  social 
centres.  Everything  went  beautifully  for 
two  weeks.    Then  three  Lutheran  pas- 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

tors,  two  Roman  priests,  and  two  Prot- 
estant ministers,  fearful  that  their  chil- 
dren were  being  influenced  away  from 
their  respective  folds,  diligent  pastors 
urged  on  by  equally  fearful  lay  people, 
severally  saw  to  it  that  their  children 
were  removed  by  their  parents  from  this 
church's  dangerous  ministrations.  Of 
course  the  church's  own  children  con- 
tinued to  come,  but  the  large  neighbor- 
hood service  which  it  had  been  hoped 
might  be  given  was  rendered  impossi- 
ble. Scout  troops,  camp-fires  of  girls, 
the  Girls'  Friendly  Society,  and  similar 
socially  ministering  organizations  suffer 
in  the  same  way. 

Third,  a  community  of  the  size  we 
are  considering  is  almost  invariably 
"  clubbed  to  death."  Every  club  one 
ever  heard  of  in  a  big  city  must,  so  it 
seems,  be  in  the  small  town  too.    Of 

132 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

course,  to  keep  them  all  going  every  one 
must  needs  belong  to  a  good  many  and 
work  hard  at  all  of  them.  In  a  certain 
midland  city  of  twenty-two  thousand 
people  there  are  listed  in  the  directory 
eighty-five  clubs.  The  society  editor  of 
the  daily  paper  has  a  list  of  fifty-two 
others,  making  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
seven  in  all.  There  are  doubtless  many 
more.  This,  for  a  city  of  less  than  five 
thousand  families,  keeps  the  adults  rather 
busy,  as  may  be  well  imagined.  Thus  is 
further  augmented  the  Church's  diffi- 
culty in  social  ministration,  especially 
among  the  children,  since  what  she  lacks 
are  not  opportunities  for  labor  nearly  so 
much  as  workers. 

Many  churches  in  small  cities  con- 
tinue to  ignore  these  facts.  Many  boards 
and  commissions  continue  to  send  to 
such   churches   programmes   for  work 

*33 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

that  are,  for  the  reasons  above  hinted 
at,  literally  impossible  of  fulfilment. 
Would  that  the  Church  might  have 
saved  all  the  time  she  has  wasted  in  such 
communities  trying,  for  instance,  to  or- 
ganize and  maintain  men's  clubs,  only 
to  find  that  on  whatever  night  the  meet- 
ings were  set  the  men  had  to  go  to  the 
Masons',  and  the  K.P.'s,  and  the  Odd 
Fellows',  and  the  Elks',  and  the  Social- 
ist meetings,  and  the  political  rallies, 
and  the  various  bureaus  of  an  over-or- 
ganized commercial  association,  and  the 
"Twilight  Club,"  and  the  E.F.U.  and 
N.F.L.  and  the  other  alphabetical  soci- 
eties for  providing  fraternal  insurance, 
and  the  volley-ball  contests,  and  the 
men's  classes  at  the  Y.M.C.A.,  and  the 
Public  Health  League,  and  Heaven  only 
knows  what  else.  In  a  city  of  small 
size   when   the  Church  aggravates  the 

*34 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

trouble  by  organizing  a  men's  club  she 
is,  to  put  it  kindly,  "supplying  a  non- 
existent social  need." 

In  women's  work  the  Church  is  apt 
to  make  the  same  mistake.  When  women 
already  have  far  more  organizations  than 
they  can  attend  to,  it  is  an  almost  crimi- 
nal waste  of  time  and  a  source  of  weak- 
ness to  both  city  and  Church  to  get  into 
being  two  or  three  or  a  half-dozen  soci- 
eties within  the  Church  itself.  It  might 
be  a  good  thing  if  many  churches  did 
what  one  of  them  did  in  such  a  city, 
namely,  abolish  all  money-making  guilds 
and  place  finance  upon  a  dignified  basis, 
and  then  establish  just  one  organization 
for  women,  a  club  which  met  once  in 
two  weeks  and,  with  the  aid  of  good 
speakers,  furnished  largely  through  the 
State  university,  spent  many  profitable 
afternoons  discussing  problems  of  liter- 

135 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

ary,  social,  and  religious  interest,  with 
special  attention  to  education,  both  secu- 
lar and  religious,  and  industrial  and  social 
justice.  Of  course  the  war  put  a  stop  to 
it,  because  the  members  now  must  devote 
all  their  spare  moments  to  relief  work 
of  various  kinds,  but  for  times  of  peace 
it  was  a  very  helpful  organization. 

One  finds  in  many  places  of  this  small- 
ness  that  the  Church  is  running  sewing- 
clubs  for  girls,  when  the  continuation 
and  industrial  schools  are  doing  the  work 
as  well  as  the  Church,  and  often  better. 
One  finds  little  gymnasia,  badly  equipped, 
full  of  Church  boys  working  without 
adequate  skilled  supervision,  even  though 
a  Y.M.C.A.  may  furnish  in  the  town 
skilled  direction  at  a  price  which  most  of 
the  boys  can  pay  and  which  the  Church 
might  well  raise  for  the  few  who  are  too 
poor  to  belong. 

136 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

These  are  only  instances.  The  more 
one  examines  the  work  of  the  Church 
in  small  cities  the  more  one  is  apt  to  be 
convinced  that  where  she  attempts  to 
minister  herself  directly  and  as  an  organi- 
zation to  the  social  needs  of  the  com- 
munity, she  does  it  badly,  wastefully, 
blunderingly. 

What,  then,  can  the  Church  in  such 
places  do  in  the  way  of  social  service  ? 
It  is  possible  to  put  the  answer  in  two 
sentences  of  eight  words  each:  (i)  She 
can  assist  the  community* s  own  social  ac- 
tivities. (2)  She  can  preach  religion  related 
to  social  needs. 

The  former  is  possible  in  many  ways. 
First,  the  clergy,  the  vestry,  and  other 
men  of  the  congregation  can  join  the 
commercial  association  and  work  within 
it  — not  merely  as  citizens,  but  as  a  group 
of  Christian  men  who  may  take  counsel 

*37 \ 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

with  one  another  as  to  the  best  ways  for 
them  to  act  through  that  organization 
to  further  the  good  of  the  community, 
in  the  light  of  Christ's  teaching.  They 
can,  if  they  will,  make  their  special  work 
the  promotion  of  the  civic  side  of  the 
association's  work.  They  will  find  their 
efforts  welcomed,  if  they  exert  common 
sense  and  have  a  real  love  of  their  fellows 
in  their  hearts.  Every  man  admissible 
can  associate  himself,  not  merely  pas- 
sively, but  actively  in  the  work  of  his 
labor-union  and  in  the  Trades  and  La- 
bor Council,  and  usually  the  pastor  can 
be  made  a  fraternal  delegate  and  attend 
the  meetings  if  he  really  wishes  to  do 
so.  Women  can  be  urged  to  enter  the 
women's  clubs,  the  mothers'  clubs  of 
the  schools,  the  Associated  Charities,  and 
other  existing  secular  organizations,  de- 
termined  to   help   fill    them  with   the 

138 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

spirit  of  Christ's  religion  and  to  assist 
them  to  works  of  social  betterment.  The 
Y.M.C.A.  and  Y.W.C.A.  can  be  assisted, 
not  merely  to  do  their  large  social  work, 
but  to  refrain  themselves  from  a  narrow- 
ness which  Church  people  can  help  to 
broaden.  Boys  and  girls  can  be  enlisted 
in  these  organizations,  to  their  great 
help,  and  taught  how  to  be  useful  in  and 
through  them.  Pressure  can  be  con- 
stantly brought  to  bear,  with  patience 
undiscouraged  by  rebuffs,  until  the  com- 
munity takes  up  for  itself  the  recreation 
problem,  the  social-centre  problem,  and 
the  neighborhood-guild  problem,  and 
solves  them.  Ways  of  cooperation  in- 
numerable will  be  found  by  any  Church 
which  honestly  looks  for  them. 

The  preaching  of  the  social  Gospel 
is  the  second  opportunity  for  social  serv- 
ice. Such  preaching  depends  not  only 

139 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

upon  the  pastor's  knowing  its  necessity, 
but  also  to  a  considerable  degree  upon  the 
congregation's  feeling  with  him  in  the 
matter.  By  preaching  the  social  Gospel 
is  not  in  the  least  meant  giving  secular 
discourses,  disguised  by  a  text  and  a  few 
pious  words  occasionally,  on  economics 
and  sociology.  There  is  nothing  quite 
so  pathetic  as  the  prophet  become  the  lec- 
turer. What  is  meant  is  the  leading  of 
the  people  through  sermons  to  see  them- 
selves as  social  beings,  to  see  sin  as  a 
collective  fact  for  which  individuals  are 
all  mutually  responsible,  to  see  salvation 
both  in  terms  of  this  world  and  in  terms 
of  this  world,  to  realize  how  fully  each 
man  is  his  brother's  keeper,  to  feel  them- 
selves obligated  through  allegiance  to 
Christ  and  adoption  by  Christ  to  become 
with  Him  strugglers  toward  the  King- 
dom on  earth. 

140 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

To   preach    the   social   Gospel  is  to 
sound   aloud    the  trumpet   call   of  the 
army  of  Jesus,  to  utter  the  battle-cry 
of  the  Invisible  King,  to  fill  men  not 
merely  with  a  vision  of  their  social  na- 
ture, but  with  a  supernatural   enthusi- 
asm and  power  from  on  high  sufficient 
to  enable  them  to  deny  the  attractive 
appeals  of  the  world,  the  subtle  temp- 
tations  of  the    flesh,    and    the    cynical 
promptings  of  the  selfish  Devil,  and  to 
remain  the  soldiers  and  servants  of  the 
Lord   Incarnate  until  their  lives'  ends. 
It  is  to  help  them  to  see  the  sacraments, 
not  as  pieces  of  miraculous  mechanism 
to  be  selfishly  absorbed,  but  as  means  of 
grace  to  help  in  time  of  need  the  armies 
of  God  to  quit  them  like  men ;  to  assist 
them  to  understand  Baptism  as  a  sealed 
enlistment,  Confirmation   as   an  arma- 
ment, Penance  as  a  rededication  and  a 

141 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

reacceptance  of  the  soldier,  Communion 
as  the  common  martial  Feast  of  the 
heroic  Captain  of  Salvation  with  His 
varied  forces  both  of  the  living  and  of 
those  passed  over  into  the  greater  life. 
To  do  something  of  all  this,  with  a  heart 
on  fire  with  an  evangelism  which  is  not 
merely  a  means  of  saving  individuals 
from  hell,  but  of  restoring  all  creation, 
"which  groaneth  and  travaileth  together 
even  until  now,"  to  union  with  Almighty 
God,  is  to  preach  the  social  Gospel. 

This  is  the  most  important  social  serv- 
ice that  the  Church  can  render  in  any 
community.  In  small  communities  it, 
and  cooperation  in  community-wide  ac- 
tivities, with  all  thought  of  the  Church 
itself  as  an  end  to  be  served  eliminated,  is 
often  the  only  social  service  the  Church 
can  do  without  causing  more  harm  and 
confusion  than  she  accomplishes  good. 

142 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

Thesis:  In  communities  of  from  three 
thousand  to  thirty  thousand  people  the  Church 
should  be  careful  to  cooperate  with  movements 
of  the  community  itself  looking  toward  social 
betterment  and  not  to  start  social  service 
movements  of  her  own  which  will  compete 
with  these  larger  ones  and  so  further  divide 
what  is  probably  already  a  too  greatly  divided 
community '.  She  should  fearlessly  and  with 
prophetic  zeal  preach  in  that  community  in 
every  possible  way  the  social  Gospel.  By 
cooperation  and  social  evangelization  she 
will  accomplish  the  maximum  of  good  with 
the  minimum  of  evil. 

VII.    WHAT  MOST  HINDERS  THE  CHURCH  IN 
AIDING  ANY  LOCAL  COMMUNITY? 

Probably  the  greatest  hindrance  to 
the  local  usefulness  socially  of  any  con- 
gregation of  Christians  is  their  regard- 
ing themselves  and  their  being  regarded 

x43 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

by  the  community  as  an  end  to  which  the 
community  is  expected  to  minister.  It 
is  very  easy  for  a  church  to  forget  that 
what  is  wisdom  from  on  high  for  its 
individual  members  is  also  wisdom  from 
on  high  for  the  organization,  namely, 
that  salvation  comes  only  from  self-for- 
getful sacrifice.  All  too  many  churches 
spend  most  of  their  time  asking  instead 
of  giving.  All  too  many  ecclesiastical 
groups  seem  to  have,  as  their  sole  idea 
of  a  church,  an  organization  for  which 
money  must  somehow  or  other  be  pro- 
cured. Often  it  seems  as  though  Church 
people  were  laboring  tremendously  to 
get  a  plant  in  running  order  and  then 
having  no  strength  to  use  it  when  it 
was  prepared  for  service.  It  is  an  evi- 
dence of  petty  vision  that  churches 
are  usually  most  filled  with  enthusiasm 
when  they  are  raising  money  for  their 

144 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

own  benefit,  to  build  with,  to  pay  a 
mortgage  with,  to  reduce  a  debt  with, 
and  that  often  enthusiasm  dies  when 
everything  is  ready  and  paid  for  and 
usable. 

If  a  church  is  to  be  useful  in  a  com- 
munity, if  it  is  to  demand  respect,  if  it 
is  to  be  a  power  for  righteousness,  it 
must  venture  greatly,  give  largely,  think 
unselfishly.  Its  eyes  must  be  turned  up 
toward  God  and  out  toward  the  world, 
never  in  upon  itself. 

Thesis:  In  any  community ,  before  the 
Church  can  render  social  service  effectively ', 
it  must  see  God  very  really  and  the  people 
round  about  it  —  their  sins,  their  needs,  their 
wants,  their  hungers  and  their  surfeits,  their 
falling  short  of  the  Kingdom  ideal  of  justice 
and  love — very  clearly;  it  must  be  on  fire  to 
bring  God  and  this  people  together  that  they 
may,  indeed,  dwell  together  in  such  a  com- 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

monwealth  as  shall  reflect  heaven  on  earth; 
and  it  must  be  willing  to  sink  all  thought  of 
itself  in  this  tremendous  task  —  this  task 
which  is,  after  all,  the  Church's  sole  reason 
for  being  in  that  community  or  on  the  earth. 


CHAPTER  V 

NATIONAL  AND  INTERNATIONAL 
PROBLEMS 

Ye  shall  hear  of  wars  and  rumors  of  wars:  see  that  ye 
be  not  troubled:  for  these  things  must  needs  come  to  pass ; 
but  the  end  is  not  yet. 

ST.    MATTHEW,    24  :   6 

In  a  time  like  this,  when  almost  every 
nation  of  the  world,  our  own  included, 
is  engaged  in  the  mightiest  war  of  his- 
tory, a  time  when  men's  hearts  are,  in- 
deed, failing  them  "for  fear  of  what  is 
coming  on  the  earth,"  a  time  when 
ideas  and  ideals  of  internationalism  pre- 
viously held  by  many  of  us  are  being 
tested  in  a  giant  crucible,  a  time  when 
patriotism,  long  a  suspect  virtue  to  think- 
ing people,  is  being  advanced  as  a  virtue 
challenging  us  to  heroic  sacrifices,  it  is 

H7 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

obvious  that  the  Church  must  have  some 
message,  if  she  is  to  be  the  moral  teacher 
of  the  world,  to  troubled,  seeking  souls. 
Let  us,  in  deep  humility,  recognizing 
our  great  limitations,  speak  in  this  chap- 
ter of  the  Christian's  moral  relationship 
to  the  ideal  of  patriotism,  the  ideal  of 
internationalism,  and  the  great,  sad,  ugly 
fact  of  war. 

I.    WHAT  SHALL   BE  THE  CHRISTIAN  ATTITUDE 
TOWARD   PATRIOTISM  ' 

While  we  are  at  war  every  one  of  us 
runs  through  a  twofold  danger,  a  sort 
of  Scylla  and  Charybdis  very  difficult  to 
steer  between.  Scylla  is  the  temptation 
to  magnify  anything  that  calls  itself  pa- 
triotism to  an  absurd,  dangerous,  and 
immoral  degree.  Charybdis  is  the  en- 
ticement to  lift  internationalism  into  a 
sentimental   and    irrational    nonsensity. 

148 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

The  thing  we  all  have  to  do  is  to  hold 
to  both  patriotism  and  internationalism, 
in  balanced  degrees.  If  this  is  to  be  done, 
we  must  see  each  of  them  rationally. 

Rational  patriotism  and  rational  in- 
ternationalism mean,  in  the  last  analysis, 
such  patriotism  and  such  international- 
ism as  conform  to  the  moral  law  of 
God.  The  highest  achievement  in  the 
realm  of  morals  of  which  the  human 
mind  has  as  yet  become  aware  is  that 
sublime  law,  of  which  we  have  so  often 
spoken  in  this  book,  which  states  that 
salvation  is  attained  only  by  voluntary 
self-sacrifice.  Such  a  patriotism  and  such 
an  internationalism  as  are  reflections  of 
that  fundamental  principle,  and  in  con- 
formity therewith,  are  to  the  highest 
degree  rational. 

If  one  looks  on  patriotism  as  devotion 
to  one's  country  conceived  of  as  a  place 

149 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

where  human  beings  may  mutually  sac- 
rifice themselves  for  one  another's  wel- 
fare and  all  together  sacrifice  themselves 
for  the  welfare  of  other  nations,  then 
one's  patriotism  is  a  rational  patriotism. 
If  one's  internationalism  is  a  belief  that 
there  should  be  a  commonwealth  of  na- 
tions wherein  each  may  gladly  substitute 
the  welfare  of  all  instead  of  its  own  as  a 
national  motive,  then  one's  internation- 
alism is  intelligible.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
one  holds  that  a  nation  may  rightly  be 
used  for  the  benefit  of  some  of  its  citi- 
zens at  the  cost  of  most  of  them,  one's 
patriotism  is  criminal ;  and  if  by  interna- 
tionalism is  meant  non-resistance  by  the 
nations  while  one  enslaves  and  prosti- 
tutes the  others  for  its  own  ends  and  the 
satisfaction  of  its  own  ambitions  and 
lusts,  one's  internationalism  has  become 
an  immoral  absurdity. 

150 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

Thesis :  In  this  crisis ,  as  in  all  times  y  it 
is  the  business  of  every  intelligent  Christian 
and  Christian  organization  so  to  preach 
Christ 's  law  of  love  that  all  men  may  per- 
ceive the  folly  of  attempting  to  build  up 
either  nationalism  or  internationalism  on  any 
basis  save  the  basis  of  that  law. 

Patriotism  means  devotion  to  coun- 
try. Christian  patriotism  means  devo- 
tion to  country  as  a  field  for  possible 
mutual  self-sacrifice,  and  therefore  of 
mutual  salvation,  on  the  part  of  its  peo- 
ple. It  is  plain  that  much  which  masks 
under  the  sacred  name  of  patriotism  is 
but  a  sorry  caricature,  based  upon  a 
wholly  different  idea.  Constantly  we 
hear  people  urged  to  love  our  country 
because  they  make  their  living  here,  be- 
cause they  get  wages  here  better  than 
are  given  elsewhere,  because  they  enjoy 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

better  housing  and  food  and  clothing 
and  other  material  comforts  than  they 
or  their  fathers  had  in  the  old  lands. 
The  appeal  is  that  we  must  make  Amer- 
ica triumph  because  it  is  a  means  for  us 
to  get  more  than  other  peoples  can  get 
of  the  things  of  the  earth,  earthy.  This 
patriotism  for  profits  is  a  poor  imitation 
of  real  patriotism.  It  is,  too,  a  positively 
dangerous  thing  for  the  country's  wel- 
fare. Its  obvious  corollary  is  that  if  for 
any  reason  any  one  should  not  get  these 
material  rewards  in  great  abundance  he 
had  better  stop  being  patriotic.  It  sug- 
gests inevitably  that  if  another  nation 
should  be  at  war  with  us  which  could 
promise  better  material  advantages  than 
our  people  were  getting,  they,  if  they 
were  shrewd,  would  be  justified  in  turn- 
ing traitor.  (As  a  matter  of  fact,  by  way 
of  illustration,  the  strongest  card  in  the 

152 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

hands  of  pro-German  agitators  among 
the  more  ignorant  classes  of  labor  in  this 
crisis  is  the  fact  that  those  classes  are 
better  cared  for  physically  in  Germany 
than  they  have  been  for  a  generation  or 
two  at  least  in  this  country.)  Another 
corollary  is  this,  that  the  moment  a  war 
is  to  be  waged  for  anything  else  than 
material  ends,  a  war  for  ideals,  a  war 
for  theories,  a  war  for  philosophies,  — 
a  war,  if  you  will,  for  democracy,  — 
thousands  of  believers  in  this  false  patri- 
otism immediately  become  uninterested 
slackers. 

If  America  is  regarded  merely  as  a 
place  where  individuals  sometimes  get 
prosperous,  it  is  a  grave  question  whether 
America  will  get  or  deserve  to  get  the 
sacrifices  necessary  to  preserve  her.  Only 
those  who  believe  her  the  one  place 
where  preeminently  men   may  live  in 

J53 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

real  democracy  some  day,  sacrificing 
themselves  for  one  another  in  a  great 
brotherhood,  will  be  willing  to  give 
their  all  for  her,  including  wealth,  ma- 
terial satisfactions,  and  even  the  blood 
of  life. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  Americans 
have  done  all  too  little —  and  our  proph- 
ets in  religion  have  been  willing  too 
much  to  acquiesce  in  our  doing  that  lit- 
tle—  to  foster  among  our  people  the 
ideal  of  mutual  and  socialized  prosperity 
as  our  national  goal,  a  goal  to  be  attained 
by  cooperation.  Consequently  we  find, 
in  time  of  war,  a  nation  considerable 
fractions  of  which  ask  already,  and  will 
continue  more  to  ask  as  the  screws  are 
turned  tighter,  exactly  the  questions  one 
might  have  expected  they  would  ask, 
namely,  "Would  German  world  dom- 
ination hurt  our  pocketbooks  any  ?"  and, 

•     154 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

"  Are  such  things  as  international  law 
on  the  high  seas  and  the  abstract  the- 
ories of  democracy  worth  giving  up  our 
material  security  and  prosperity  to  battle 
for?" 

Vast  numbers  of  our  people  came  to 
this  country  in  the  first  place  frankly 
for  dollars  and  cents.  Have  we  given 
them  any  higher  ideals  since  their  ar- 
rival ?  Other  vast  numbers,  especially 
Russians,  Poles,  and  Finns,  have  come 
to  us  because  the  longing  for  a  democ- 
racy was  as  a  burning  fire  in  their  breasts; 
and  instead  of  nurturing  their  love  for 
democracy  as  our  choicest  treasure,  we 
have  quenched  it  in  a  flood  of  materialis- 
tic and  heartless  industrialism.  We  have 
rewarded  such  of  them  as  forsook  their 
ideals  and  joined  the  mad  scramble  for 
individual  prosperity  with  the  petty  bau- 
bles most  of  us  have  sought,  and  have 

l55 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

turned  the  hopeful  enthusiasm  for  Amer- 
ica of  such  as  have  not  surrendered  into 
bitter  hate  of  ourselves  in  the  light  of 
professions  not  lived  up  to. 

The  reason  why  in  this  crisis  it  is 
such  a  difficult  thing  to  rouse  our  people 
to  heights  of  patriotic  fervor  is  that, 
while  we  have  regarded  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  as  a  noble  document, 
we  have  little  read  and  less  believed  it; 
because  the  Constitution  made  to  con- 
serve democracy  in  our  midst  has  been 
itself  used  to  prevent  democracy  from 
growing;  because  we  have  made  our 
youth  admire  and  imitate  the  ruthless 
few  who  had  scrambled  over  the  many 
to  positions  of  power,  those  who  had 
achieved  a  spurious  success  in  that  they 
"escaped  out  of  the  rut  of  common  la- 
bor/3 There  is  nothing  to  wonder  at 
in  the  spectacle  of  a  nation,  so  encour- 

i56 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

aged  in  selfishness  and  the  negation  of 
fraternity,  being  sluggish  in  responding 
now  to  what  is  its  first  real  call  for  dec- 
ades to  sacrifice  material  things  for  great 
ideals. 

Thesis:  Surely  if  Christians  have  any 
message  toward  American  nationalism  in 
these  days  it  is  something  like  this:  "Amer- 
ica, it  is  high  time  that  we  turn  over  per- 
manently  a  new  leaf.  It  is  time  that  we  read 
again  into  our  national  life  the  old,  half -for- 
gotten social  aims  of  our  forefathers.  It  is 
time  that  we  made  common  labor  so  tolera- 
ble that  men  should  no  longer  seek,  with  an 
ardor  like  that  of  the  damned  to  escape  from 
hell,  to  get  free  from  it  and  be  among  the 
privileged.  It  is  time  that  we  learned  to  love 
and  to  honor,  in  deed  as  well  as  word,  those 
who  freely  sacrifice  their  abilities  for  the 
public  good.  America,  until  we  make  of 
ourselves  a  nation  whose  people  live,  not  by 

iS7 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

bread  alone,  but  by  every  word  of  that  su- 
preme wisdom  of  sacrifice  which  is  from 
the  mouth  of  God,  our  nationalism  will  be 
weak  and  powerless,  our  patriotism  suspect 
before  God  and  man.  It  is  folly  to  cry, 
*  God  save  the  State,'  unless  we  acco?npany 
it  with  the  truly  yneant  cry,  'Brethren,  let 
us  love  one  another?  God  can  save  only  that 
State  which  to  its  citizens  is  a  means  toward 
the  Kingdom,  a  commonwealth  so  much  greater 
than  any  of  them  as  to  demand  of  all  of  them 
their  all  for  one  another." 

This  new  idealism,  this  new  national- 
ism, this  new  patriotism,  all  of  which  are 
in  theory  as  old  as  our  nation,  we  have 
not  hopelessly  lost.  We  are  rapidly  re- 
gaining them.  Even  in  what  were  once 
the  most  selfish  of  all  our  organiza- 
tions, our  chambers  of  commerce  and 
business  men's  associations,  one  can  see 

i58 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

the  newer,  nobler  ideals  emerging.  In 
the  broadening  of  their  vision  from  that 
time  when  their  sole  purpose  seemed  to 
be  to  produce  more  profits  for  their  mem- 
bers, until  now,  when  their  insistent  cry 
is  for  the  common  weal,  one  cannot  but 
see  a  very  significant  straw  in  the  wind 
to  show  the  trend  of  thought  among  us. 
The  world  is  moving  rapidly  and  rightly 
when  such  a  great  organization  of  com- 
mercial and  manufacturing  and  profes- 
sional men  as  the  Rotary  Clubs  can  come 
into  being  and  grow  rapidly,  those  clubs 
whose  membership  is  drawn  for  the  most 
part  from  those  who  have  been  the  devo- 
tees rather  than  the  victims  of  Mammon, 
but  which  take,  nevertheless,  as  their 
fundamental  conviction  the  belief  that  he 
best  succeeds  who  serves  the  good  of 
others  than  himself.  Things  are  moving, 
indeed,  when  the  commercial  classes  are 

159 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

thus  saying  that  he  who  gains  the  whole 
world  and  loses  his  own  soul  is  the  poor- 
est kind  of  business  man  and  the  worst 
sort  of  patriot. 

The  same  tendency  is  easily  seen 
among  the  laboring  classes.  From  indi- 
vidualism to  trades-unionism  is  itself  a 
great  step  forward  in  social  and  patriotic 
thinking.  Now  we  are  seeing  the  rapid 
completion  of  that  further  process  by 
which  trades-unions  are  becoming  fed- 
erated, and  the  beginning  of  what  is  truly 
if  not  in  name  an  industrial  union,  of  all 
the  workers,  for  common  action  and  mu- 
tual assistance.  In  labor  as  in  business  we 
see  the  coming  collectivism  wherein  lies 
our  hope  of  a  noble  and  abiding  nation- 
alism. 

In  the  third  place,  there  is  coming 
into  being  a  realization,  on  the  part  of 
commercial  and  employing  classes,  on 

160 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

the  one  hand,  and  of  workingmen,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  their  interests  are  mu- 
tual, not  contradictory,  a  feeling  that  they 
must  needs  get  together.  Of  course  this 
movement  is  as  yet  hardly  more  than  in 
its  infancy.  Many  employers  do  not  see 
it.  Many  laborers  and  labor  organiza- 
tions seem  quite  unaware  of  it.  More 
and  more  on  each  side,  however,  do  see 
it  with  every  passing  day.  Now,  in  time 
of  war,  the  nation  is,  because  it  must  be, 
demanding  it.  The  employer  who  says 
that  "his  business  is  his  own  and  he  in- 
tends to  run  it  as  he  pleases,  employing 
and  discharging  whom  he  wills,  paying 
what  he  chooses,  uncontrolled  by  any 
damned  labor  organization  or  any  med- 
dling government  inspectors,"  is  rapidly 
becoming  as  anachronistic  as  Tennyson's 
poetry  and  Landseer's  "  Stag  at  Bay/3 
He  served  his  purpose,  as  did  they,  but 

161 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

as  a  product  of  the  twentieth  century 
he  is  inexcusable.  So,  too,  although  the 
I.W.W.  maintains  the  contrary  with  a 
vigor  in  itself  evidential,  the  labor  or- 
ganization which  looks  on  itself  merely 
as  a  means  for  holding  up  industry  for 
all  it  can  bear  and  passing  the  cost  on  to 
the  consumer  is  to-day  late-Victorian,  a 
curiosity,  and  a  good  bit  of  a  bore. 

Everywhere  we  look  we  see  that  the 
new  nationalism  is  coming.  In  this  time 
of  national  crisis  most  of  us  perceive, 
dimly  it  may  be  and  hardly  more  than 
instinctively  as  yet,  that  great  as  is  our 
military  and  naval  unpreparedness,  our 
financial  unpreparedness,  our  emotional 
unpreparedness,  there  is  yet  among  us 
another  deficiency  —  an  unpreparedness 
due  to  an  industrial  system  without  na- 
tional vision,  fraternal  aims,  or  social 
ideals  worth  dying  for.    And  seeing  that 

162 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

unpreparedness  we  are  rapidly  and  de- 
terminedly trying  to  make  good  our 
lack. 

Thesis :  All  Christians  should  be  for- 
warding  to  the  extent  of  their  power  the  new 
nationalism.  They  must  not  be  content  in  this 
time  of  crisis  with  urging  the  Liberty  Loan 
and  the  Red  Cross  and  the  Y.M.C.A.,  not 
satisfied  with  saluting  the  flag  and  having 
processions  and  singing  the  national  anthem. 
They  7nust  also  help  all  our  people  to  realize 
that  those  principles  offreedo?n,  equality,  and 
fraternity  and  those  i?ialie?iable  rights  of 
hu?nan  beings  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  happiness,  which  our  fathers  believed 
in  and  for  which  they  gave  all  they  had  and 
were,  are  not  mere  political  shibboleths,  but 
vital  and  necessary  principles  for  all  our 
common  living.  They  must  assist  us  all  to 
believe  that  these  ideals  and  principles  may 
yet  be,  and,  please  God,  shall  be,  translated 

163 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

from  paper  and  ink  to  the  vital  relationships 
of  mankind  in  America  and  through  her  as- 
sistance  to  the  entire  world. 

It  is  well  to  remember,  however,  that 
in  such  a  metamorphosis  of  American 
life  there  is  bound  to  develop  a  struggle. 
All  will  not  see  the  vision.  Many  will 
insist  upon  the  retention  of  their  privi- 
leges and  exemptions,  actual  or  hoped 
for,  no  matter  whether  the  public  weal 
justifies  them  or  not.  There  will  be 
those  who  will  insist  upon  their  rents 
and  interest  to  the  same  extent  that  they 
have  up  until  now  enjoyed  them.  Some 
will  certainly  be  found  fighting  to  keep 
down  the  tides  of  rising  democracy.  Ob- 
viously, sooner  or  later,  these  persons 
must  be  policed. 

What  attitude  is  the  Church  to  take 
toward  this  necessary  and  inevitable  po- 

164 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

licingr  Shall  she  be  heard  asking  that 
the  many  be  passively  non-resistant  while 
the  few  continue  to  exploit,  while  the 
minority  coerce  the  majority,  while  the 
Divine  law  of  cooperation  is  displaced 
for  the  wisdom  learned  by  man  from 
the  beasts  that  prey  ?  Surely  that  will 
not  be  the  position  she  will  take. 

Thesis:  The  Church  must,  beginning 
right  now,  preach  the  morality  of  Jesus 
Christ  so  plainly  that  when  the  ti?ne  comes 
that  those  exploiters  who  are  unconverted 
shall  be  policed  and  dispossessed,  it  will  not 
be  necessary  for  her  personally  to  oppose  the 
anti-social  remnant.  Men,  having  heard 
her  and  k?town  her,  shall  understand  what 
Christians  think  of  these  things  and  exactly 
where  they  stand.  Social  malefactors  shall 
perceive  in  her  their  enemy  and  shall  shun 
her  support  and  her  comradeship.  The  com- 
mon  people  as  they  come  into  their  own  shall 

165 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

have  found,  ere  the  policing  time  comes ,  in 
her  preaching  of  the  Master  of  Sacrifice 
that  toward  which  in  their  human  wisdom 
they  are  reaching  out.  What  the  Church  is 
to  do  in  the  day  of  readjustment  is  not  the 
question  of  moment.  The  thing  that  really 
matters  is  what  the  Church  is  to  do  and 
say  between  now  and  the  dawning  of  that 
day. 

II.  WHAT  SHALL  BE  THE  CHRISTIAN  ATTITUDE 
TOWARD  INTERNATIONALISM? 

In  order  to  understand  international- 
ism, one  must  remember  something  of 
the  way  in  which  civilization  has  de- 
veloped. 

The  primary  unit  in  society  was  the 
family.  Originally  each  family  was  a 
group  unto  itself,  its  hand  against  every 
other  family's  hand  for  a  good  part  of 
the  time,  and  even  in  times  of  actual 

1 66 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

peace  its  mind  a  poisoned  vat  of  sus- 
picion against  its  neighbors.  In  those 
early  days  if  there  had  arisen  one  who 
maintained  as  practicable  a  community 
which  should  consist  of  several  cooper- 
ating families,  he  would  doubtless  have 
been  regarded  as  a  silly  fool.  At  length, 
however,  such  groupings  did  actually 
come  into  existence.  Families,  thrown 
together  by  economic  compulsion,  found 
in  the  first  place  that  those  they  had  es- 
teemed as  strangers  to  be  hated  were, 
after  all,  little  different  from  themselves, 
and  saw,  in  the  second  place,  that  it  paid 
better  to  cooperate  than  to  seek  to  an- 
nihilate one  another.  It  was  economic 
advantage,  coupled  with  propinquity, 
which  brought  about  the  coalition  of 
families  into  clans. 

Then  the  whole  process  was  repeated, 
different  only  in  that  the  competitors 

167 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

who  hated  one  another  and  fought  one 
another  were  now  clans  instead  of  fam- 
ilies. At  this  point  any  poor  idealist  who 
should  have  dreamed  of  a  larger  unit 
composed  of  cooperating  clans,  had  he 
made  public  what  he  hoped  might  be, 
would  doubtless  have  been  suspected  of 
disloyalty  to  his  clan  and  possibly  of 
deficiency  in  ordinary  common  sense. 
Nevertheless,  the  clans  did  unite  at  last; 
and  the  two  coupling  forces  were  again 
economic  advantage  and  propinquity. 

Once  more  similar  events  repeated 
themselves.  The  tribes,  each  made  up 
of  several  clans,  were  intolerant  of  one 
another.  Each  one  loved  its  tribal  breth- 
ren, worked  for  them,  fought  for  them, 
sacrificed  for  them,  and  regarded  with 
distrust  mingled  with  hate  every  other 
one  it  met.  If  there  were  seers  in  those 
days,  as  doubtless  there  occasionally  were, 

168 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

who  longed  for  a  day  by  them  deemed 
possible  when  tribes  might  cooperate  in- 
stead of  destroy  one  another,  they  were 
scorned  as  impractical  theorists  beyond 
all  doubt.  Again,  notwithstanding  this 
scorn,  economic  advantage  and  propin- 
quity overcame  tribal  jealousy  enough 
to  produce  that  larger  grouping  which 
we  may  call  the  city-state,  where  the 
people  were  settled  folk,  or  the  confed- 
eracy, as  among  such  nomads  as  the 
Israelites.  Still  again,  the  now  familiar 
process  was  repeated  and  these  city-states 
and  nomadic  confederacies  were  by  the 
same  forces  as  we  have  already  seen  at 
work  united  into  that  which  we  term 
nations. 

The  process  was  not  yet  completed. 
Time  and  development  went  on  and  na- 
tions were  at  length  united  into  em- 
pires.   It  is  really  with  empires  that  we 

169 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

are  concerned  to-day,  not  with  nations, 
in  any  proper  sense  of  that  word.  Of 
all  the  nations  engaged  in  the  Great 
War,  France  is  most  a  homogeneous  na- 
tion, but  even  she  is  not  entirely  so. 
Italy  is  a  little  less  so  than  France.  Rus- 
sia, Germany,  Austria-Hungary,  Great 
Britain,  even  tiny  Belgium  are  confed- 
eracies unnatural  from  an  ethnic  point 
of  view.  Our  own  United  States  is  an 
empire.  Not  only  are  there  here  min- 
gled multitudes  from  every  nation  un- 
der Heaven,  but  there  are  also  three 
great  divisions  of  the  country  the  dis- 
tinctness of  whose  interests  and  customs 
is  only  beginning  to  be  blurred  —  the 
North,  the  South,  and  the  Pacific  Coast. 
However,  for  convenience,  because  of 
custom,  let  us  call  all  these  empires  na- 
tions. With  us  the  cooperating  group 
has  developed  until  it  is  as  large  as  the 

170 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

nation.  There  may  be,  there  are,  many 
persons  who  think  it  is  impossibly  ideal- 
istic, practically  nonsensical,  to  hope  for 
a  day  when  nation  shall  no  longer  rise 
up  against  nation,  no  longer  be  suspi- 
cious of  nation,  no  longer  compete  with 
nation  commercially  or  by  arms  —  a  day 
when  all  shall  be  united  in  cooperation 
within  the  fold  of  one  world-wide  com- 
monwealth. Yet,  if  there  is  anything  to 
be  learned  from  the  study  of  human  his- 
tory, it  is  as  certain  as  the  sun's  rising 
on  the  morrow  that  before  long  this 
happy  event  shall  have  been  brought  to 
pass  because  of  the  same  two  welding 
forces  that  have  ever  been  at  work,  eco- 
nomic necessity  and  that  acquaintance 
which  comes  through  increasing  near- 
ness to  one  another  of  the  peoples  of 
the  earth.  As  soon  as  men  shall  fully 
see,  as  they  were  beginning  to  see  before 

171 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

the  Great  War,  and  as  they  will  see 
again  as  soon  as  the  war  is  over,  —  in- 
deed, as  they  are  seeing  while  the  strug- 
gle goes  on,  —  the  identity  of  their 
economic  interests  and  the  waste  inci- 
dent to  their  national  oppositions  and 
distrusts,  and  as  soon  as  the  acquaintance 
between  them  which  the  steamship,  the 
railroad,  the  telephone,  the  telegraph, 
the  aeroplane,  and  the  printing-press 
will  inevitably  bring  about,  has  grown 
a  very  little  more,  there  will  come,  re- 
gardless of  theorists  for  or  against  it,  the 
breaking-down  of  nationalities  and  the 
coming-in  of  the  United  States  of  the 
World. 

In  all  this  will  lie  a  great  opportunity 
for  Christians.  It  is  therefore  important 
that  no  Christian  be  stampeded  into  that 
sort  of  patriotism  which  cries,  "  My 
country,  right  or  wrong,  good  or  bad, 

172 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

as  an  end  in  itself,  my  country. "  Our 
country  is  not,  no  nation  can  be,  a  su- 
preme end  in  itself.  All  of  them  will 
be  swallowed  up  into  the  international 
commonwealth  by  the  inevitable  process 
of  human  evolution.  No  Christian  can 
afford  to  lose  sight  of  that  fact.  The  in- 
ternational State  will  furnish  Christian 
ethics  its  greatest  field  for  operation,  and 
is  therefore  a  thing  devoutly  to  be  wished 
for,  prayed  for.  Brotherhood  in  Jesus  is 
not  a  thing  of  nations,  of  races,  of  colors. 
Brotherhood  is  international. 

Thesis :  It  is  surely  the  business  of  the 
Church  to  urge,  even  in  time  of  war,  the 
unity  of  life  interests  between  the  peoples  of 
the  world;  to  combat  the  development  of 
national  hatreds ;  to  promote  as  best  she  may 
international  trust  and  charity ;  to  show  the 
world  that  in  promoting  internationalism  lies 
the  greatest  and  most  wide-reaching  Chris- 

173 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

tian  service  that  any  Church,  any  nation, 
any  individual  can  possibly  render.  She  must 
teach  as  a  noble  expression  of  her  Master  s 
morality  the  philosophy  back  of  that  most  no- 
ble of  President  Wilson  s  utterances,  "Amer- 
ica desires  nothing  for  herself  which  she  is 
not  willing  all  the  nations  of  the  world  should 
share" 


III.  WHAT  SHALL  BE  THE  CHRISTIAN  ATTITUDE 

TOWARD  WAR? 

For  a  proper  judgment  of  war  the  first 
thing  that  is  necessary  is  to  clear  up  a 
confused  point  in  much  thinking  upon 
the  subject.  It  is  commonly  said  that  war 
is  evil  in  itself.  It  is  less  commonly  but 
still  occasionally  said,  that  war  is  good 
in  itself.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  neither. 
Goodness  and  badness  are  attributes  of 
beings  who  possess  free  will.  War  is  an 
inanimate  thing.    It  is  possible  to  say, 

*74 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

therefore,  of  it  that  it  is  good  or  bad 
only  according  to  the  goodness  or  bad- 
ness of  its  users. 

This  mistake  of  ascribing  to  things 
moral  qualities  rightly  ascribed  only  to 
persons  is  a  singularly  common  one  to- 
day. There  was  a  time  when  people 
rightly  said  that  a  proper  use  of  alcohol 
was  a  good  thing,  and  that  improper  use 
of  it  was  a  bad  thing.  Now  one  hears 
constantly  such  statements  as  would  in- 
dicate that  the  alcohol  itself  is  supposed 
to  be  wicked.  Probably  no  one  means 
quite  that,  but  they  say  it  or  something 
very  like  it  and  it  leads  to  muddled 
thought.  Time  was  when  ambition  em- 
ployed to  further  noble  ends  was  called 
good  and  ambition  selfishly  employed 
was  called  evil.  Now  it  is  quite  com- 
mon to  hear  people  say,  "  That  man  is 
ambitious,  and  ambition  is  a  good  thing/' 

*75 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

quite  apart  from  any  consideration  of 
the  use  to  which  the  man  is  putting  it. 
Time  was  when  every  one  knew  that 
dancing  could  be  made  to  minister  to 
beauty  and  religion,  in  which  case  it 
was  holy,  or  to  license  and  voluptuous- 
ness, in  which  case  it  was  carnal  and 
corrupting.  Then  the  Puritans  came 
along  and  said  that  all  dancing  was  evil 
in  itself.  We  all  reacted  from  this  after 
a  while,  until  lately  we  were  assuming 
that  dancing  was  good  in  itself.  Of 
course  both  attitudes  were  silly. 

We  do  a  similar  thing  in  judging  war. 
We  ascribe  a  moral  quality  to  an  im- 
personal, and  therefore  non-moral  thing. 
War  is  not  in  itself  wrong.  Neither  is  it 
right.  The  goodness  or  badness  of  war 
cannot  be  rightly  spoken  of  any  more 
than  the  hardness  of  black  or  the  sooti- 
ness  of  space.    If  war  is  a  means  used  for 

176 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  man- 
kind, it  may  be  called  good;  if  war  is 
a  thing  used  for  the  hindrance  of  these 
things,  it  may  be  said  to  be  bad.  Again 
let  it  be  said  that  the  goodness  or  bad- 
ness lies  not  in  the  war,  but  in  the  war- 
rior. To  determine  the  morality  of  war 
as  a  whole  is  therefore  impossible.  To 
judge  the  goodness  or  badness  of  any  par- 
ticular war  one  must  discover  the  motive 
of  those  waging  it. 

But,  it  may  be  and  often  is  objected, 
God  has  forbidden  killing  of  man  by 
man.  No,  what  has  been  forbidden  is 
murder.  A  murder  is  an  anti-social  kill- 
ing. It  is  in  its  anti-sociality,  not  in  the 
mere  killing  involved,  that  the  sin  of 
murder  lies.  The  commandment  of  Mo- 
ses is  embedded  in  other  Jewish  regula- 
tions in  which  are  specifically  prescribed  a 
number  of  cases  when  killing  of  man  by 

177 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

man  is  made  a  positive  God-commanded 
duty.  Our  Lord,  when  interpreting  the 
commandments,  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  does  not  enlarge  the  sixth  one 
so  as  to  forbid  all  killingy  but  rather  to 
prohibit  all  hate.  Not  even  in  our  Lord's 
"  non-resistance  "  statements  is  there  any 
prohibition  of  war.  He  did,  indeed,  for- 
bid us  to  resist  injury  and  oppression 
done  to  ourselves ;  but  there  is  no  state- 
ment that  His  followers  should  stand 
by  while  those  who  are  weak  and  un- 
able to  protect  themselves  are  oppressed 
and  even  destroyed.  Can  any  one  imag- 
ine Jesus  coming  upon  a  drunken  man 
who,  wild  with  anger,  mad  with  egotistic 
wrath,  was  beating  a  baby  to  death,  and 
the  Master  standing  by  while  the  brutal 
work  was  finished?  Can  one  not  see  the 
way  in  which  He  would  rush  to  that 
little  one's  protection?   War  is  not  for- 

178 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

bidden  by  God  in  either  the  Jewish  or  the 
Christian  dispensation,  so  far  as  the  rec- 
ords show.  War  for  selfish  revenge  or 
for  anti-social  ends  is,  indeed,  but  corpo- 
rate murder;  but  all  war  is  not  murder. 

It  is  necessary,  therefore,  of  each  war 
that  happens  that  men  should  ask  what 
are  its  motives,  for  what  it  is  being 
waged.  Upon  the  answer  to  that  query, 
and  upon  that  alone,  depends  the  mo- 
rality of  fighting. 

Thesis :  Christian  people  should  recognize 
that  each  war  is  right  or  wrong,  for  or 
against  God's  will,  according  to  whether  it 
is  being  waged  for  self  or  for  others  who 
are  being  oppressed. 

IV.    WHAT    SHOULD    BE    THE    CHRISTIAN    ATTI- 
TUDE TOWARD  THE   PRESENT  WORLD  WAR  ? 

We  saw  a  few  moments  ago  that  the 
world,  impelled  by  economic  interests 

179 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

and  urged  on  by  certain  rapidly  increas- 
ing understandings  between  peoples  of 
various  nations  and  tongues,  engendered 
by  a  propinquity  in  itself  the  result  of 
vastly  improved  means  of  intercommu- 
nication, will  doubtless  move  into  inter- 
nationalism in  the  early  future.  This  in- 
ternationalism would  have  come  about 
in  our  time  or,  at  longest,  in  that  of  our 
children  had  it  not  been  for  the  exist- 
ence in  certain  nations  largely,  and  to 
some  extent  in  most  nations,  of  castes 
whose  continuance  in  power  was  in- 
volved in  the  preservation  of  nation- 
alistic jealousies  and  conflicts.  These 
kingly,  oligarchic,  and  militaristic  beings 
were  in  control  of  the  machinery  of  gov- 
ernment in  Russia,  Germany,  Austria, 
and  to  a  considerable  extent  in  England, 
Italy,  and  France.  In  the  last  three  their 
power  was  a  rapidly  waning  thing,  of  no 

180 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

particular  importance  except  for  the  fact 
that  they  were  still  managing  the  inter- 
national and  diplomatic  relationships  of 
those  countries.   Before  the  war,  to  a 
very  large  extent,  perhaps  to  a  greater 
extent  than  our  own  country,  these  three 
countries   were   internally  democracies. 
Internationally  they  were  still  controlled 
by  the  ancient  castes.    In  all  six  lands 
the  people  themselves  were  eminently 
friendly  over   their  borders  with  their 
neighbors.  They  were  rapidly  becoming 
so  friendly  that  they  would  soon  have  in- 
sisted upon  their  governments  becom- 
ing parties  to  a  world  federation  which 
should  have  been  the  first  step  in  fusing 
into  one  people  the  nations  of  at  least 
the  Occident. 

It  so  happened  that  in  19 14  there 
came  to  a  head  certain  differences  be- 
tween the  nations,  largely  economic  dif- 

181 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

ferences  in  the  Balkans  between  Russia 
and  Germany.  The  governing  castes 
which  managed  these  countries  smashed 
their  nations  into  war  and  forced  their 
unwilling  but  docile  peoples  with  them. 
Then  the  German  military  caste,  with 
no  consultation  of  the  German  people, 
decided  to  violate  Belgium.  In  other 
words,  they  determined  to  ignore  those 
international  treaties  which  were  the 
early  expression  of  the  coming  interna- 
tional federation.  By  this  action  Ger- 
many made  plain  to  the  world  its  nega- 
tion, at  the  command  of  the  ruling  class, 
of  that  internationalism  which  appar- 
ently had  been  inevitable.  Using  its 
mightily  efficient  organization  this  caste 
had  miseducated  Germany  for  genera- 
tions and  now  misled  and  coerced  Ger- 
many. England  and  France  perceived 
that    this    nation,   gone    foaming    mad 

182 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

against  international  fraternity,  was  a 
world  menace  demanding  drastic  op- 
position. In  self-defence  these  nations 
joined  with  Russia  to  oppose  the  Ger- 
man masters.  Of  course  Russia  at  this 
period  of  the  war  was  not  one  whit  bet- 
ter than  her  Teutonic  foe.  She  was  less 
efficient,  but  equally  vicious. 

Meanwhile  America  was  outside  the 
struggle,  and  would  have  been  glad  to 
keep  out.  It  is  a  question  whether  or 
not  she  ought  to  have  seen  the  true  na- 
ture of  the  struggle  and  enlisted  against 
Germany  from  the  very  beginning.  At 
any  rate,  she  did  not,  and  she  did  not 
desire  so  to  do.  However,  the  German 
caste,  either  through  an  almost  unbe- 
lievable stupidity  or  through  a  deliberate 
desire  to  make  us  fight  that  we  might 
be  of  less  aid  to  the  Allies  in  furnishing 
supplies  for  war,  adopted    toward   the 

i83 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

United  States  a  policy  of  frightfulness, 
contempt,  and  hypocrisy  mixed  in  about 
equal  portions  which  finally  became  in- 
tolerable. We  were  forced  to  enter  the 
war  or  acknowledge  the  right  of  Ger- 
many to  fight  irresponsibly  against  the 
world.  We  chose  the  former  alterna- 
tive. Fortunately  for  the  clearing-up  of 
the  international  issue  the  Russian  peo- 
ple grew  tired  of  their  own  Kaiserism 
and  militarism  and  shook  them  off, 
emerging  a  free  people,  at  almost  the 
same  moment. 

Such  is  the  situation  to-day.  The 
Germanic  nations  are  left  the  only  ones 
in  the  Occidental  world  where  the  peo- 
ple do  not  rule.  The  necessity  is  to  fight 
Germany  so  insistently  that  at  length  the 
peoples  of  the  Central  Powers  may  wake 
up  to  a  realization  of  their  bondage,  cast 
Wilhelm  and  the  Junkers  after  Nicholas 

184 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

and  his  Grand  Dukes,  and  assume  con- 
trol of  their  own  affairs.  Then,  and  not 
till  then,  will  democracy  be  safe  and  in- 
ternationalism possible.  Thus,  and  thus 
only,  can  civilization  be  made  secure 
from  a  nation's  running  amuck  under 
the  domination  of  a  caste  determined 
to  preserve  its  privileges  even  if  their 
perpetuation  can  be  secured  only  by  con- 
flict with  the  internationalistic  trend  of 
the  twentieth  century. 

When  the  end  shall  come,  and  the 
Central  Powers  are  freed  from  their 
own  master  classes,  we  shall  have  once 
more  the  Occidental  nations  of  Europe 
and  the  Americas  free  to  continue  such 
fraternizing  and  the  development  of 
such  common  economic  interests  as  shall 
make  easy  the  natural  historical  devel- 
opment of  the  international  State.  The 
Orient  will  still  be  outside,  the  Orient 

i85 


RIGHT  AND  WRONG 

whose  ability  to  become  democratic  is 
still  the  gravest  question  of  the  future. 
If,  however,  a  conflict  between  East  and 
West  is  to  come  in  the  days  ahead  of  us, 
—  which  may  God  forbid,  —  the  West 
shall  face  the  peril  one  people  united 
either  for  world  war  or  for  world  peace. 
Internationalism,  the  creation  of  a 
pan-national  grouping,  wherein  democ- 
racy may  come  to  flower  politically  and 
industrially,  this  is  the  end  for  which 
the  present  conflict  is  being  waged.  The 
Junkers  of  the  world  are  ever  seeking 
to  debase  the  issues  involved.  Even  in 
America  a  certain  powerful  group  of 
hate-mongering,  imperialistic  pseudo- 
patriots  is  ever  trying  to  turn  our  Cru- 
sade into  a  petty  conflict  for  our  good  at 
the  cost  of  a  subject  and  crushed  mid- 
Europe.  The  issue,  however,  must  be 
seen  clearly.    From  this  war  we  shall  go 

186 


AFTER  THE  WAR 

on  to  one  of  two  things,  International- 
ism or  Chaos.  There  will  be  no  via  media. 
The  sis :  The  Church  should  prophesy  that 
this  war  must  be  waged  on  behalf  of  inter- 
national democracy  and  for  no  lesser,  baser 
reason  whatsoever,  and  that  as  long  as  it 
is  fought  for  such  a  purpose  by  the  free  peo- 
ples of  the  earth,  it  is  a  good  war.  God 
grant  we  may  fight  it  like  Christian  men! 
Let  the  Church's  voice  sound  forth  with  ?io 
uncertain  ring.  Then  shall  the  whole  world 
know  that  the  determined  shoutings  of  the 
democratic  combatants  are  but  the  echoes  of 
a  thundering  cry  of  the  angelic  hosts,  pro- 
claiming, "Deus  vultf"  Then  shall  we 
hear  above  the  thunder  of  the  guns  and  the 
moanings  of  the  wounded  the  cry  of  those 
who  over  Bethlehe?ns  plain  sang,  "  Peace 
on  earth  to  men  of  good  will." 

THE  END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


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